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Commonly confused · Collaboration, Voice & AV

Latency vs Jitter vs Packet Loss: What's the Difference?

Latency is the delay for a packet to travel end to end, jitter is the variation in that delay from packet to packet, and packet loss is the percentage of packets that never arrive. Real-time voice and video are sensitive to all three, which is why QoS exists.

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Packet Loss

Full definition
LatencyJitterPacket Loss
MeasuresDelayVariation in delayMissing packets
Unitsmillisecondsmillisecondspercent
Voice target150 ms or less one way30 ms or less1% or less
User symptomTalking over each other, echoChoppy, robotic audioClipped words, dropouts, frozen video
Common causesDistance, queuing, serialization, processingCongestion, variable queuing, route changesCongestion drops, errors, bad cabling or wireless
MitigationPriority queuing (LLQ), shorter pathsJitter buffers, QoSQoS, fix errors, adequate bandwidth
Remember it

Latency is late, jitter is uneven, loss is gone.

Exam tip

Questions give a symptom (choppy or robotic voice) and ask the cause (jitter), or ask the recommended one-way delay for voice (150 ms). Jitter buffers fix jitter but add latency.

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