Jitter

Jitter is the variation in arrival time of packets that should have arrived at uniform intervals, measured as the standard deviation of inter-arrival times or as packet delay variation. High jitter degrades real-time services such as voice and video, which compensate with playout buffers. Low jitter is a key requirement of VoLTE/VoNR and 5G URLLC.

Categories: Radio Access NetworkProtocols and StandardsEncryption and Cryptography

Jitter in context

The radio access network is where mobile devices attach to the operator's infrastructure. Attacks in this layer include IMSI catching, rogue base stations and downgrade attacks; defenses rest on mutual authentication, integrity-protected signaling and Open RAN supply-chain hygiene.

Telecom security is written into standards from 3GPP, GSMA, ETSI, IETF and ITU-T. Understanding which body owns which specification, and how they interlock, is essential for both design and audit work.

To place Jitter in the wider telecom-security picture, review ETSI ISG MEC, Zigbee, QCI, ADSL, CSFB and SRTP: each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

Related topic hubs

More from the TelcoSec Glossary

Browse the full TelcoSec Glossary, the Ultimate Guide to Mobile Network Security, or the P1 Arsenal of telecom-security tools.