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  1. Home>
  2. IT Topics>
  3. Performance>
  4. Jitter Monitoring
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Jitter Monitoring with PRTG

Get rid of delays and speed up performance

  • Run network jitter tests to detect issues quickly
  • Keep an eye on VoIP and QoS for optimal performance
  • Get jitter alerts for faster, proactive troubleshooting
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Our users give top ratings for monitoring with Paessler PRTG

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PRTG jitter monitoring: What you will find on this page

Table of content
  • Advantages of using PRTG to measure jitter for VoIP
  • What jitter monitoring looks like in PRTG
  • Run more effective jitter tests with PRTG
  • Discover some preconfigured sensors for jitter monitoring
  • Optimize your quality of service with these expert tips
  • Monitor jitter: FAQ

PRTG makes network jitter monitoring as easy as it gets

Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify and prevent network latency and other network performance issues.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Advantages of using PRTG to measure jitter for VoIP

Many companies use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). However, one single delayed data packet can lead to transmission errors and disruptions that are noticeable at once: Jitter can cause the call quality or video quality to go down or fill the line with static. With Paessler PRTG, you’ll keep a constant eye on jitter values to make sure this doesn’t happen.

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Stable video calls

In companies that use VoIP, employees can’t work efficiently unless the network is stable. Make sure your coworkers are able to do their jobs without interruption with PRTG.

If fluctuations in jitter values occur, you can quickly intervene to eliminate them. Our network monitoring tool also enables you to monitor other parameters that affect your network’s quality of service (QoS).

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Custom real-time alerts

PRTG stands out from other latency and jitter monitoring tools – its alerting system is completely customizable. It immediately notifies you in the event of a problem via SMS, email, push notification, and more, so you can react quickly and before noticeable outages occur.

Thanks to PRTG, you’ll lift a huge weight off the shoulders of your support team, as fewer coworkers will have incidents to report.

What jitter monitoring looks like in PRTG

Diagnose network issues by continuously tracking jitter levels in your network. Show statistical jitter, MOS, round-trip time (RTT), and other key metrics in real time. Visualize monitoring data in clear graphs and dashboards to identify problems more easily. Gain the overview you need to troubleshoot network congestion and jitter issues.

PRTG Screenshot device tree view

Device tree view of the complete monitoring setup

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Custom PRTG dashboard for keeping an eye on the entire IT infrastructure

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Live traffic data graph in PRTG

Start monitoring jitter values with PRTG and see how it can make your network more reliable and your job easier.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

IT experts agree: Paessler PRTG is a great solution for IT infrastructure monitoring

PCMag

“All-around winning
 network monitor”

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“The real beauty of PRTG is the endless possibilities it offers”

ITPro

“PRTG Network Monitor 
is very hard to beat”

Run more effective jitter tests with PRTG

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Run free jitter tests

PRTG comes with 100 free sensors that never expire, so you can run free network jitter tests.

Start by creating a preconfigured jitter monitoring sensor. You don’t have to run a trial first and you can read the jitter value directly from your network.

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Run better jitter tests

Only PRTG’s continuous and automated jitter monitoring including its easy-to read graphs and clear dashboards can determine what is causing your jitter values to fluctuate.

Other individual jitter tests won't tell you much because they only check jitter for a specific point in time.

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Measure jitter accurately

PRTG  complies with the standards of the RTCP for measuring jitter (RFC 1889). Jitter is measured in milliseconds (ms) and displayed directly in the PRTG sensor.

Methods for measuring jitter include mean packet delay variation and mean absolute packet delay variation.

Explore our preconfigured PRTG sensors for jitter monitoring

PRTG comes with more than 250 native sensor types for monitoring your entire on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud environment out of the box. Check out some examples below!

Ping Jitter

The Ping Jitter sensor sends a series of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo requests ("pings") to a URI to determine the statistical jitter. It can show the following:

  • Execution time
  • Statistical jitter value
Ping Jitter
Ping Jitter

QoS (Quality of Service) One Way

The QoS (Quality of Service) One Way sensor monitors parameters regarding the quality of a network connection between two probes. It can show the following:

  • Average, minimum, and maximum jitter
  • Average, minimum, and maximum packet delay variation
  • Corrupted, duplicated, lost, and out-of-sequence packets
  • Time to the last packet
(Quality of Service) One Way
(Quality of Service) One Way

QoS (Quality of Service) Round Trip

The QoS (Quality of Service) Round Trip sensor monitors parameters regarding the quality of a network connection between two probes. It can show the following:

  • Average, minimum, and maximum jitter
  • Average, minimum, and maximum packet delay variation
  • Average, minimum, and maximum round trip time (RTT)
  • Corrupted, duplicated, lost, and out-of-sequence packets
  • The MOS
(Quality of Service) Round Trip
(Quality of Service) Round Trip

Cisco IP SLA

The Cisco IP SLA sensor monitors Voice over IP (VoIP) network parameters using IP service level agreements (SLA) from Cisco. It can show the following:

  • Average jitter
  • Average, minimum, and maximum latency and RTT (round-trip time)
  • The ICPIF
  • The MOS
  • Number of lost, out-of-sequence, and late packets
Cisco IP SLA
Cisco IP SLA

See the PRTG Manual for a list of all available sensor types.

Find the root cause of the problem with our PRTG jitter monitoring solution

Real-time notifications mean faster troubleshooting so that you can act before more serious issues occur.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

PRTG is compatible with all major vendors, products, and systems

compatible with all major vendors, products, and systems

Optimize your quality of service with these expert tips

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Monitor latency

How much time does a data packet need for its "trip” from the sender to the receiver? This time is referred to as latency. According to ITU-T, the agency responsible for telecommunications standards, latencies of up to 125 milliseconds are acceptable.

PRTG’s recommendation: Set a threshold of 100 milliseconds. You’ll immediately receive an alert if this value is exceeded, allowing you to act quickly before noticeable interruptions or crashes arise.

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Calculate MOS

The mean opinion score is used to express the quality of a call. VoIP transmission. It is the arithmetical average of several parameters. The lowest MOS is 1, while the highest MOS is 5.

This score is based on jitter, latency, and other parameters. As a compilation of values, MOS offers a quick overview of the status of your VoIP.

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Monitor jitter

Jitter measures the variation in a mean latency value. We recommend that this deviation be less than 20 to 25 milliseconds, even if this amount is somewhat lower than what is usually considered acceptable.

What’s important is that you become aware of jitter as quickly as possible so you can take action at once. It also depends on your expectations: for some, jitter and delays of any kind are unacceptable.

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Monitor packets

Individual packets are often responsible for problems with VoIP. Packets can get lost, become corrupted, or arrive as duplicates or in the wrong order.

PRTG lets you identify each of these scenarios. We recommend setting your packet loss rate threshold at 0% so that just one lost packet will generate an error message or lead to a malfunction.

PRTG makes network jitter monitoring as easy as it gets

Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify and prevent network latency and other network performance issues.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW

“PRTG helps us to keep control of our IT by making issues visible immediately – and everywhere. We always have an eye on the performance and availability of our IT and can react in time if any failures occur. On a long-term perspective, the monitoring data helps us with capacity planning so that we can deliver the required resources for our own systems as well as for our customers, without wasting money on unwarranted redundancies.”

Stein Erik Høybakk, Senior Network Engineer
TAFJORD

“All our production and business processes depend on SAP. But, of course, IT and production systems also play a crucial role in securing these processes. By incorporating SAP, production, and IT into one centralized monitoring system, we can quickly detect critical drops in performance and identify the causes of these issues. In fact, thanks to PRTG and itesys, this couldn’t be any easier.”

Andreas Schmidt, Senior Systems Engineer
Truma

“Any downtime could be detrimental to our customers. We also strive to provide the best possible service to our customers. PRTG allows us to see the health and performance of the network. Using these measurements we can make decisions on how to repair a piece of equipment before it fails and causes a service interruption.”

James Ott Jr., Communications System Technician and IT Administrator
Federal Radio

Your jitter monitor at a glance – even on the go

Set up PRTG in minutes and use it on almost any mobile device.

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Gartner peer insights

“Excellent tool for detailed monitoring. Alarms and notifications work greatly. Equipment addition is straight forward and server initial setup is very easy. ...feel safe to purchase it if you intend to monitor a large networking landscape.”

Read the complete review at Gartner Peer Insights

Create innovative solutions with Paessler’s IT partners

Partnering with innovative IT vendors, Paessler unleashes synergies to create
new and additional benefits for joined customers.

NetBrain

NetBrain

Integrating monitoring results from PRTG into NetBrain maps makes the foundation for network automation.

Read more
Plixer

Plixer

Paessler and Plixer provide a complete solution adding flow and metadata analysis to a powerful network monitoring tool.

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UVnetworks

UVnetworks

UVexplorer integrates tightly with PRTG to bring fast and accurate network discovery, detailed device inventory, and automatic network mapping to the PRTG platform.

Read more

Find the root cause of the problem with our PRTG jitter monitoring solution

Real-time notifications mean faster troubleshooting so that you can act before more serious issues occur.

Free download
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
Paessler PRTG

Paessler PRTG

Network Monitoring Software – Version 24.4.102.1351 (November 12th, 2024)

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Discover more monitoring insights and stories

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Solutions for all your monitoring needs

  • Network jitter tests
  • VoIP troubleshooting
  • Network latency monitoring
Resources Content

Powerful stories from the monitoring world

  • How to quickly monitor the latency of your network
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  • Need to Choose a CDN Provider for Your Website? Here Are the Most Important Criteria
Resources Solutions

Resources to master your monitoring challenges

  • Wrong max-latency value retrieved using Cisco IP-SLA udp-jitter sensor
  • How does PRTG calculate the MOS score for QoS sensors?
  • IP SLA Sensor - Latency not available in the charts

Jitter Monitoring: FAQ

 

What is jitter?

Data packets are transmitted at a certain speed. A sender sends packets to a receiver in millisecond intervals. Jitter occurs when this interval gets off track, leading to deviations or irregularities in runtime. The term "jitter” means fluctuation, oscillation, or a variation in frequency.

How is jitter calculated?

Jitter is calculated mathematically and in a standardized fashion. The IETF has outlined its jitter calculation method in RFC 3550. PRTG uses this protocol to calculate jitter.

  • The Real Time Jitter value is updated every time a packet is received using the formula described in RFC 1889: Jitter = Jitter + ( abs( ElapsedTime – OldElapsedTime ) – Jitter ) / 16
  • The Statistical Jitter value is calculated according to the first x packets received using the statistical variance formula: Jitter Statistical = SquareRootOf( SumOf( ( ElapsedTime[i] – Average) ^ 2 ) / ( ReceivedPacketCount – 1 ) )
What happens if jitter is too high?

If data packets reach a receiver at irregular intervals, then loopholes emerge. As a result, data can no longer be circulated on a continual basis. While this may not be a big deal for web or email applications, it can cause interruptions in phone and video calls for companies who use VoIP. You’re also likely to encounter glitches at home when running real-time applications such as videos or computer games.

What causes jitter?

One example of how jitter can spike is when a data line is heavily strained, causing bandwidth bottlenecks to appear in intermediate devices. In such a case, your available bandwidth is usually not sufficient (make a bandwidth test). High jitter can also be caused by data congestion in switches and routers. PRTG promptly alerts you if your hardware is overloaded, so you can intervene quickly – before your system malfunctions.

How do I eliminate jitter?

If jitter is high, then you may want to increase your bandwidth. Usually, however, this comes at an additional charge. As an alternative, you can give higher priority to VoIP than to other data packets, such as emails.

Why is jitter monitoring important for VoIP?

If a problem occurs with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) during the transmission of data packets, then this protocol is in danger of malfunctioning. One single delayed data packet can lead to transmission errors and delays that are noticeable at once. Jitter can cause the audio signal to go down or fill the line with static.

What is a sensor in PRTG?

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.

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Everyone has different monitoring needs. That’s why we let you try PRTG for free.

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Start monitoring jitter with PRTG and see how it can make your network more reliable and your job easier.

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    Paessler PRTGMonitor your whole IT infrastructure
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