Brought to you by Primus - a smart choice for your Internet and Home Phone services.
So, you get why speed is important for your internet. Faster internet equals better streaming, right? And you get that unlimited internet means never worrying about things like 4K streaming, video game downloads, or missing an overage notice. And you get that you can fix things like Wi-Fi dead zones to ensure a better internet experience. But what if you’re still experiencing internet problems? Well, it’s time to talk about jitter and latency and why they’re important.
Jitter
When you use the internet, your machine is exchanging information with another machine via the proverbial series of tubes that is the internet. Information is travelling back and forth in the form of packets. You click a link on YouTube—your device sends packets. YouTube gets them and sends information packets back and those packets make up your video.
If those information packets are delayed in transmission, that’s called jitter. We can measure jitter in milliseconds, where lower is better.
You’ve probably experienced jitter. If you’ve seen some fragmentation in your Netflix show or experienced frame-rate drops in an online video game, that’s jitter. If it gets bad enough, it can end your show or get you booted from your game.
Latency
Latency is slightly different. It’s the amount of delay there is between when information packets get sent from your device to the internet you’re using and back to your device. As with jitter, it’s measured in milliseconds and lower is better.
But . . . My Speed Is Fine?!
So you’ve taken a speed test, such as Cloudflare, and found that you have great download and upload speed but high-ish jitter or latency. What gives?
Imagine driving your kids to hockey practice. If the rink is five kilometres away and you’re driving when there’s empty streets and you hit every green light, you might get there really fast. That’s sort of like your top internet speed. It can happen, but it might not for a number of reasons.
Now imagine driving in normal traffic. You won’t be going as fast as you could be in theory, and that’s sort of how latency works. Your data packets encounter things like route changes and other factors limiting them from hitting their maximum possible speed, which creates a delay.
Finally, imagine driving your kids to the rink, but disaster strikes. One of them knocks over your coffee and you have to pull over and clean it up. Or you get stuck behind a school bus. Or you have to turn around, go back home, and grab your kid’s helmet. You can still make up the time on your journey by speeding up, but there’s a stop-and-start thing going on. That’s kind of like jitter. The average speed hasn’t changed, but problems along the way make it rough going.
So . . . What Do I Do?
If you look at a speed test such as Cloudflare, you can see entries for jitter, latency, and maybe even packet loss. As we’ve said, lower is better.
You can’t really fix jitter or latency on your end. But if you’re experiencing internet problems and, using the above speed test, determine that poor jitter or latency is the problem, then at least you’ve identified the issue. The next step is to speak with someone at your internet service provider—or jump ship for a better one.
