Difference between Latency and Jitter

The latency and jitter are the features attributed to the flow in the application layer. The latency and jitter are used to measure the network's performance. In this article, you will learn the difference between Latency and Jitter. But before discussing the differences, you must know about the Latency and Jitter.

What is Latency?

The latency means the delay. Latency in an OS is the time between when an interrupt occurs and when the processor starts to run code to handle the interrupt. It is measured in milliseconds and is defined as the total delay between input or instruction and the desired output.

In networking terms, the time spent between the user's request for network access being processed and the user receiving a response to the request. Latency is the amount of time that elapses between the execution of two events. The latency of a data packet is the amount of time it takes to get from its source to its destination.

The network latency may be measured in two ways. The first type of latency is known as one-way latency, and it simply counts the time between the source sending the packet and the destination receiving it. In the other type, known as a round trip, the one-way latency from node A to node B is combined with the one-way latency from node B back to node A.

Examples of Latency

There are various examples of latency. Some of them are as follows:

1. Network Latency

A delay in communication through a network is called network latency. For instance, when one system on a LAN attempt to connect to another via the router, a slow router may cause a few milliseconds of delay. When two computers from separate continents communicate through the Internet, the latency may be more noticeable. Due to the distance and number of "hops" necessary in making the connection, there may be a delay in simply establishing the connection. In this case, the "ping" response time is a useful latency indicator.

2. Disk Latency

The delay between the time data is requested from a storage device and the time data begins to be returned referred to as disk latency. The seek time and the rotational latency are two factors that influence disc latency. For instance, the hard disk with a rotating speed of 5400 RPM would have nearly twice the rotational delay as a drive with a rotational speed of 10,000 RPM. Latency may also be increased by the seek time that is the physical movement of the drive head to read or write data. Reading or writing a large number of files takes significantly longer than reading or writing a single contiguous file due to disk latency. SSDs have substantially lower latency because they do not rotate like regular HDDs.

What is Jitter?

Operating system jitter (OS Jitter) is the interference experienced by an application because of the scheduling of background daemon processes and the handling of asynchronous events like interrupts. In other words, jitter happens when the variate's latency via the network is delayed. It's been seen that parallel applications on big clusters suffer significant performance reduction owing to OS jitter.

In terms of networking, jitters refer to the continuous delays between the network's data transfers, even if they choose the same path. In a packet-switched network, it is critical for two reasons. The first reason is that the packets are routed individually. The second reason is that the network devices receive packets in a queue because the continuous delay pacing may not be ensured. It could be a major concern for real-time communications, such as video conferencing, IP telephony, and virtual desktop infrastructure.

Effects of Jitter

There are various effects of jitter. Some of the effects are as follows:

1. Network Congestion

Network congestion happens on the network. Network devices can't send the same amount of traffic that they receive, their packet buffer fills up, and they begin discarding packets. Every packet arrives if there is no network disruption at an endpoint. However, if the endpoint buffer becomes full, packets will arrive later and later, which causes a jitter. Similarly, the jitter is rapidly altering if there is impending network congestion. It is also known as incipient congestion. It is feasible to detect incipient congestion by monitoring the jitter.

2. Packet Loss

When packets do not come regularly, the receiving endpoint must compensate and attempt to correct them. In some circumstances, it is unable to make the necessary adjustments, and packets are lost. In terms of the end-user experience, it may take numerous forms. For instance, if a person is watching a movie and the video becomes pixelated, it indicates probable jitter.

How does the user compensate for jitter?

A jitter buffer is used at the receiving endpoint of the connection to compensate for the jitter. In order to determine when inconsistent intervals are sent, the jitter buffer gathers and stores incoming packets.

1. Static Jitter Buffer

Static jitter buffers are built into the system's hardware and are normally configured by the manufacturer.

2. Dynamic Jitter Buffer

The network administrator configures dynamic jitter buffers that are integrated into the system's software. They may adapt to changes in the network.

Main differences between the latency and jitter

Here, you will learn the main differences between Latency and Jitter. Various differences between the Latency and Jitter are as follows:

1. Latency is defined as the delay between the departure and arrival of an IP packet from its source to its destination. In contrast, jitter is the delay caused by packet transmission.
2. Latency may be minimized by using several internet connections. On the other hand, jitter may be prevented by using the timestamps.
3. Latency may be caused by propagation delay, switching, routing, and buffering. On the other hand, jitter may be caused by network congestion.

Head-to-head comparison between the Latency and Jitter

Here, you will learn the head-to-head comparison between latency and jitter. Various head-to-head comparisons between the latency and jitter are as follows:

Conclusion

Jitter and latency are critical benchmarks for monitoring network performance. Latency refers to the time elapsed between the sender's transmission of a packet and the receiver's reception of the packet. In contrast, jitter arises when the latency of the variate via the network is delayed.