Why Jitter Causes Audio & Video Lag

While ping measures the steady delay of packets, jitter measures how inconsistent that delay is over time. If packet 1 arrives in 20 ms, packet 2 in 85 ms, and packet 3 in 22 ms, your jitter is high. Real-time applications like Zoom and Discord use jitter buffers to smooth this out; when jitter exceeds 25 ms, words cut out and robotic audio distortion occurs.