You may have seen ping jitter while doing an internet speed test. Ping Jitter is is a measure of how much a ping varies over a period of time. Lower jitter is better because it means your pings and connection are more stable. Lower pings are preferred because it takes less time to reach the server. Lower pings will significantly help VOIP and online gaming (especially in first person shooter games). If your pings are high you can lower them by considering fastpath on your connection (this is also called turning off interleaving for your connection).
Are you wondering if your ping is too high? A ping over 150 is on the high side for some online gaming and VOIP.
Some people have been searching how to lower ping jitter so here it is. Check the wiring in your house to remove interference (eg. don’t have power cables near coaxial cables). Check for wireless interference and change your wireless channel (if you use wireless). To a traceroute (in command prompt) to see if the problem is on you end or with the ISP. This will also help you diagnose where the source of the problem is.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi! I have a strange case. My missus and I have idenical PCs. Her ping is 60 with 1ms jitter. Mine is 85 with 20ms jitter, on the same connection. Performed LSPfix, reinstalled network stuff, removed unused protocols etc. Any ideas?
If you're both in the same home, connecting to the same ISP through a router, then are both of you either wired to the router or wireless connected?
I would recommend doing some more tests. You probably just tested during a bad time. Your 85 – 20ms (jitter) is 65 which is close to the 60ms. It could have been a temporary high server load or ISP load or something. What are your results today?
Hi Techie! Thanks for the reply. I've run tracert myrouter.home on both pcs. On hers its a constant <1ms, whereas mine varies between <1-30ms with the occasional 150ms-1000ms spike. We are both running wireless.
The most curious property is that, if we both tracert, say, easynet.net, my pings right throughout the trace are 70-80 ms ( with occasional 150ms spikes) where hers are consistant 50-60ms.
I consisdered a QoS problem but we both have qos uninstalled. I have tried tracert during a large DL from microsoft site and the loading makes no difference on my pc (suggesting a permanent load?)
During a pingtest.net test my ping hangs at ~80 and jitter starts at ~9ms, goes to ~20ms and varies wildly. If I repeat test over it will spike mid test and ping shoots to ~200ms and jitter get to around 150ms.
I turn off 3rd party autoupdates as a matter of course so I'm not understanding my computer's lag.
I'm seeing the problem is local. The router and beyond are just fine.
So when you run a tracert you have a high ping to the first hop (which would be your wireless router)? That right there is the problem. Your ping to the first hop should be >1ms and it should never be greater than 3 ms.
Your problem is the wireless connection between your computer and the wireless router. What's your signal strength? Are there any thick brick walls between you and the router?
^ If your wireless connection is strong it could be interference from neighboring wireless. You could try changing your wireless channel; you can do that through your router's configuration page.
Hi Techie, yup the problem is between my pc and the router. Signal is strong and I don't drop packets. Just a few floorboard between wireless card and router. I have tried channels 6 and 11 (uk suitable I believe) but both perform the same.
I have a feeling that its a software problem but there my knowledge ends.
Is there a way I can check what my pc is doing when it makes a connection, other than netstat? It seems the problem is pointing to that of the virus-related error
on that note, I can't see anything that shouldn't be there…
I'm pretty pc savvy but this is leaving me stumped!
Thanks again for your help!
Well it could be a driver problem. You could try rolling back to a previous version or updating your driver. I think if you use netstat you should see any traffic that's not supposed to be there.
Haha you caught me
I have Comcast High-speed Internet. My connection used to be steady and clear (don't know the exact stats) but noticed that over the last few months it has degraded to a constant 800-900 ping with jitter up to 250. Skipping when streaming video that used to run smoothe and making online games completely unplayable. When I scheduled a Tech to come investigate, the day of the appointment prior to his arrival, my ping dropped to 50 with almost no jitter. He never showed up, but instead marked the ticket completed at 1100 and around that time my ping shot back up to 800-900 with high jitter. Is there any standard that Comcast can be help accountable to? The unprofessionalism of the Tech involved will be handled elsewhere, but I want to know if there is a concrete standard they must meet while taking my money every month. Thank you, in advance, for any assistance you may be able to provide.
There is no standard but they'll want to bring your ping down to at least 100 or else you can just switch to another company. It's probably just bad wiring somewhere. I have DSL but we had a problem when the lines got wet. Maybe since it's autumn the lines are getting wet or loose somewhere and the connection is bad. We just had to put a new cover on it and now it works well.
Call them again and explain your problem. The tech should check the line quality and fix your connection.
I'm actually having a problem very similar. With Comcast High-speed internet, my bandwidth/speed is constantly ~15 mb/s down, 1.5 mb/s up, but I have been having unbearable ping issues for the past couple weeks. It fluctuates from the usual 20-50 ping and no jitter to 200+ ping/jitter throughout the entire day. If it turns out there's nothing wrong with your line quality and you manage to figure out what's wrong, I'd appreciate a reply here with what you did to fix it.
Like I said, it could be line quality issues. I think it could also depends on your neighbor's usage because cable internet is provided in clusters. If at certain times in the day your neighbors are downloading or uploading constantly your ping could be affected. I'm not sure about this but it seems logical.