Jitter, Packet Loss & Latency

Let's start with a layman's understanding of what they are:

Packet Loss - A "packet" is simply a packet of data (bytes) that travels across a network.  Let's use a highway analogy to best explain this:  Imagine that you have highway where cars can travel from say Boston to New York.  Some cars will leave Boston and never make it to NY, and that can also happen to packets in your network.  Any good public highway official will want ALL cars to make it unharmed to the destination, and that is also true of network professionals who want their network to deliver 100% of all packets, which essentially means no loss whatsoever.   

Latency - Everyone understands bandwidth but latency is just as (if not more) important.  For example, would you rather have a 10 lane highway that has stop and go traffic every two miles?  Or would you rather have a two lane highway where you can go 80 mph all of the time?  Bandwidth is the number of lanes, but latency is how fast your packets can travel across the network.  If your network has too much latency, your data will travel slowly and your experience will be degraded.

Jitter - Jitter is a measurement of how consistent the latency is on the network.  For example, in the 10 lane highway analogy, if some cars make it from Boston to New York in just 3 hours, while others make it in 5, and yet others in 10, then you would have an inconsistent delivery time of those cars.  The same is true for packets and in an ideal world, all packets traverse the network at the same speed and arrive at the same rate.  The rate of variance of this timing is calculated as jitter. 

So why do these things matter?  Well for starters, a great deal of what we do everyday at work is contingent upon a few basic things:
 
1) We need software applications to run smoothly and respond quickly to our commands
2) We need access to our files quickly and with ease
3) We need to be able to communicate through either a clear sounding phone call, or for the more advanced among us, an immersive unified communications experience that includes video. 
4) The longer it takes us to perform tasks that require computing or communication, the harder it is for us to get our work done. As a result, our productivity, and consequently our company's profits, suffer for it.   

Information technology and communication tools are almost hygienic in nature, we simply require them to do the grander work that our jobs compel us to do.  We only notice their absence when they aren't working properly for us. Packet loss, latency and jitter all impact those items listed above. 

So what can you do about it?  Easy, make sure you have a solid network with a service level agreement that commits to acceptable levels of packet loss, jitter and latency that are within the tolerance level of the applications and communication tools you're using or plan to deploy.

But how do you make sure that you have the right network?  This one should be so obvious we are almost afraid to answer it, but of course not wanting to miss a chance for shameless self-promotion we can't pass it up:  Call Stellis Technology Advisors, we can help.