You have 500 Mbps. Zoom is choppy. Welcome to the jitter problem.
What jitter is
Jitter is variance in ping. If your ping is 20 ms one second and 95 ms the next, your jitter is huge. Zoom, Teams and Meet need a steady stream of small audio/video packets — not a lot of bandwidth, just predictable timing. When packets arrive bunched up or out of order, video freezes and voice robotises.
How to measure
Run NetStartr. We measure jitter directly. The numbers you want:
- Under 5 ms — calls will be flawless.
- 5-10 ms — fine for most one-on-one calls.
- 10-30 ms — noticeable freezing, especially in group calls.
- 30 ms+ — calls will be painful. Diagnose now.
Three fixes that solve 90% of cases
- Get off 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. Anything above the floor of microwaves and Bluetooth — switch to 5 GHz. Jitter usually halves.
- Stop other devices. A Sonos speaker or smart-home hub doing background updates can spike jitter even on fast lines.
- Plug in. Ethernet cuts jitter to near-zero on almost every line. If your laptop has no port, a $15 USB-C adapter is worth its weight in gold for daily call quality.
Re-run NetStartr after each change. If your jitter still won't drop below 10 ms wired, contact your ISP — there's a routing or hardware issue beyond your house.