Key takeaways
- What is jitter?: Jitter is the variation in packet arrival times that causes choppy or distorted audio in VoIP calls.
- Acceptable thresholds: Keep jitter below 30ms; above 40ms will significantly degrade call quality.
- Main causes: Consider network congestion, wireless connections, outdated hardware, and poor routing.
- Primary solutions: Implement jitter buffers, upgrade network hardware, use wired connections, and configure QoS settings.
Have you ever had a jumbled-up phone conversation, where you and your friend appear to be having two separate, disjointed conversations, with sentences crossing over and a generally incoherent discussion? Usually this is a result of poor audio quality caused by jitter, and it can be extremely frustrating.
Test and monitor your call quality from your customer’s perspective with Cyara’s voice quality testing solution.
This is a widespread problem, especially with online calls. Conversation elements often mix oddly, coming through in parts, like a bad game of Scrabble. When it comes to interacting with a business, this can easily frustrate a customer and impact the quality of the conversation.
This issue is a common cause of poor Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) conversations. And unfortunately, this can adversely affect business growth in terms of higher call costs, operational inefficiencies, reduced customer satisfaction, and increased staff churn.
What is jitter?
Jitter is the variation in packet arrival times that causes choppy or distorted audio in VoIP calls. When voice data packets arrive at inconsistent intervals, conversations become jumbled and incoherent, significantly impacting communication quality.
What is VoIP?
VoIP enables individuals to make calls over the internet. It’s a great solution for many businesses, offering unprecedented flexibility and efficiency in telephone systems. Compared to making calls over traditional phone lines, VoIP enables significant cost savings by transferring the voice over the internet as input.
VoIP provides feature-filled telephone service, without the need for expensive equipment. However, the same factors that make VoIP so effective can also lead to poor service quality. As a result of VoIP’s reliance on an internet connection to make calls, your service may become prone to delays and hiccups if a connection error occurs.
Because VoIP depends on internet connections, it can often be difficult to eliminate latency. This can create significant issues, such as jitter.
The “jitterbug”
In telecommunications, “jitter” generally refers to the variation in latency or the time delay in the arrival of the packets which carry voice or video data over a communications channel. Under ideal circumstances, packets are delivered in increments to maintain a smooth dialogue. However, since your voice data is divided into individual packets, the information isn’t always received in the same order it was spoken. In other cases, network interference or congestion can cause some packets to reach the recipient faster than others.
In simple terms, jitter occurs when information arrives at the recipient’s end in a different order from how it was sent.
Types of jitter comparison
| Jitter Type | Definition | Characteristics |
| Random jitter | Also called “Gaussian jitter,” unpredictable electronic timing noise | Caused by clock timing problems or random electronic timing noise; cannot be predicted |
| Deterministic jitter | Predictable or determined jitter that is reproducible | May occur periodically; can be correlated to the data stream (data-dependent) or uncorrelated (bounded uncorrelated) |
| Total jitter | Combination of random jitter and deterministic jitter | Calculated using bit error ratio (BER): Total jitter = Deterministic jitter + 2*BER*Random jitter |
What causes jitter?
Here are several common factors that can cause jitter:
- Wireless networks: While wireless networks offer mobility and convenience, they often result in degraded network connections. Wi-Fi, in particular, isn’t inherently safe or reliable, and may lack the security required for high-quality calls.
- Bad hardware: Internet networks comprise various hardware components, such as modems, routers, and switches. Obsolete modems, damaged Ethernet cables, or misconfigured routers can all easily contribute to call quality issues.
- Network congestion: By far the most common cause of jitter, and network congestion occurs when a network becomes overcrowded with multiple devices. Insufficient bandwidth will lead to dropped or out-of-order packets, significantly slowing down connections.
Other notable causes of jitter include network capacity, bad routing through a network, and low hardware capacity on a source.
Jitter is a prevalent and frustrating issue which affects the quality of your VoIP calls. In fact, it can prompt many users to abandon calls altogether.
Cisco jitter thresholds: According to Cisco, excessive jitter surpassing 40 milliseconds (ms) will profoundly undermine your call quality. Ideally, it’s recommended to maintain jitter below 30ms where possible.
How to minimize jitter
But it’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to jitter.
Here are the key steps to reduce jitter and improve your VoIP call quality:
- Implement jitter buffers: A jitter buffer is a caching system that temporarily stores data packets and ensures they arrive at their destination in the correct order. Choose buffer size carefully, too large can introduce delay and increase latency.
- Upgrade network hardware: Replace obsolete modems, damaged Ethernet cables, and misconfigured routers with modern, properly configured equipment.
- Use wired connections: Switch from Wi-Fi to wired Ethernet connections for more stable and reliable network performance.
- Configure quality of service (QoS) settings: Prioritize VoIP traffic on your network to ensure voice packets receive preferential treatment over less time-sensitive data.
- Address network congestion: Ensure sufficient bandwidth and reduce the number of devices competing for network resources during important calls.
Cyara can provide insight into these jitter buffers with our proactive monitoring, and number testing, and voice quality testing solution.
The Importance of network monitoring
Network monitoring is a necessary component to ensure that your internal network’s hardware and data services are operating efficiently and effectively. However, whereas traditional tools tend to focus solely on your private network, Cyara’s testing and monitoring functionality extends far beyond this limitation by verifying the entire call journey.
End-to-end latency
As shown above, network monitoring does measure a variety of audio quality factors, including jitter. However, Cyara’s number testing offers a significantly broader understanding of performance and provides you with an end-to-end perspective.
At Cyara, we possess unparalleled expertise in measuring and monitoring all aspects of the customer experience. With our comprehensive tools and voice quality testing solution, you can ensure that your network consistently supports high-quality customer conversations and fosters overall business growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Jitter in VoIP calls is primarily caused by network congestion, wireless network instability, and outdated or faulty hardware such as modems, routers, and Ethernet cables. When multiple devices compete for bandwidth or when network components malfunction, data packets arrive at inconsistent intervals.
According to Cisco, jitter should be kept below 30 milliseconds for optimal VoIP call quality. Jitter exceeding 40 milliseconds will significantly degrade audio quality and may cause users to abandon calls altogether.
You can fix jitter by implementing jitter buffers to reorder packets, upgrading to modern network hardware, switching from Wi-Fi to wired Ethernet connections, and configuring quality of service (QoS) settings to prioritize voice traffic on your network.
Jitter refers to the variation in latency, or the inconsistency in the time it takes for voice data packets to arrive at their destination. When packets arrive out of order or at irregular intervals, it results in choppy, disjointed audio during a call.
The most common causes include network congestion from too many devices sharing bandwidth, unreliable Wi-Fi connections, and faulty or outdated hardware such as damaged Ethernet cables or misconfigured routers.
Jitter should ideally be kept below 30 milliseconds for high-quality calls. According to Cisco, jitter exceeding 40 milliseconds will significantly undermine call quality.
The three types are random jitter (unpredictable electronic timing noise), deterministic jitter (predictable and reproducible, either data-dependent or bounded uncorrelated), and total jitter (the combination of both, calculated using a bit error ratio).
A jitter buffer is a caching system that temporarily stores incoming voice data packets and reorders them so they arrive at their destination correctly. However, an oversized buffer can introduce additional latency, so choosing the right buffer size is important.
Poor call quality caused by jitter can lead to higher call costs, operational inefficiencies, reduced customer satisfaction, and increased staff churn, making it a significant concern for business performance.
Cyara’s voice quality testing and proactive monitoring solutions provide insight into jitter buffers and offer an end-to-end view of the entire call journey, going beyond traditional network monitoring tools that only assess private networks.
