Networking / AV-IT
Network Latency vs Jitter
01 — Definition
Two measurements not to be confused. Latency is a packet's travel time from source to destination — in AV it should stay below 1 ms on a LAN. Jitter is the variation in latency from one packet to the next, and for audio it does more damage than absolute latency: Dante's 1 ms mode requires jitter below 250 µs. That jitter comes from queuing in switches, CPU load and competing traffic.
02 — In the field
A network at 0.5 ms average latency but 2 ms of jitter will hand you Dante dropouts in 1 ms latency mode. The latency figure is often not the culprit: jitter is. Measure the two separately — a dedicated Dante performance tool shows jitter on its own.