Guide · Updated October 7, 2026
What Is Ping and Jitter?
When people say their internet "feels slow" even though the speed test shows plenty of megabits, the culprit is often latency, not bandwidth. Ping and jitter are the two numbers that describe it.
What is ping?
Ping is the time, in milliseconds (ms), that a tiny message takes to travel from your device to a server and back. It is often called latency or round-trip time. Bandwidth tells you how much data can flow per second; ping tells you how quickly a conversation with a server can start and respond.
Ping depends mostly on distance and on the number of network hops between you and the server. Light in fibre covers roughly 200 km per millisecond, so a server on another continent will always have a higher ping than one in your city, however fast your plan is.
What is jitter?
Jitter is the variation in ping from one message to the next. If every message takes 20 ms, jitter is zero. If they take 20 ms, 80 ms, 25 ms and 120 ms, jitter is high. Real-time activities such as calls and games need packets to arrive at a steady pace, so an unstable connection hurts even when the average ping looks fine.
CHECKiOX measures ping as the median of ten quick round trips, and jitter as the average difference between consecutive round trips.
What is a good ping?
These are rough guidelines for typical use. Exact thresholds vary by game and app.
| Ping | What it feels like |
|---|---|
| Under 20 ms | Excellent. Instant response, ideal for competitive gaming. |
| 20–50 ms | Very good. Fine for almost everything. |
| 50–100 ms | Acceptable. Fast-paced online games may feel slightly delayed. |
| 100–150 ms | Noticeable lag in action games and slightly awkward calls. |
| Over 150 ms | Poor. Expect delays in games and talking over each other in calls. |
For jitter, under about 10 ms is excellent, and under about 30 ms is generally fine for video calls. Consistently higher values cause choppy audio and video.
Ping vs download speed: what's the difference?
Imagine a water pipe. Download speed is how wide the pipe is, and ping is how long it takes the first drop to arrive. Streaming a movie needs a wide pipe but tolerates a delay of a second or two. A video call or online game needs only a thin pipe, but the delay must be short and steady.
How to lower ping and jitter
- Use a wired connection. Ethernet is faster and far steadier than Wi-Fi, and it removes most jitter.
- Stop background traffic. Cloud backups, game updates and streams on other devices fill your line and add delay for everything else.
- Move closer to the router or switch to the 5 GHz band if you must use Wi-Fi.
- Restart your modem and router to clear a congested or glitching device.
- Choose a nearby server in games and calling apps. Distance sets the lowest ping you can get.
- Turn off your VPN while testing or gaming. It adds an extra stop on the route.
- Talk to your provider if jitter stays high on a wired connection. The problem may be on the line.
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