Jitter Now Dominates Packet Transmission Time
As networks get faster, packet serialization time falls by orders of magnitude. Jitter does not: it holds roughly constant on wired hardware and is growing with wireless, virtualization and satellite links. That widening gap invalidates the ACK timing signals traditional congestion control uses to set TCP sending rates.
- At high speeds, timing noise overwhelms the real signal: at 10 Gbps, jitter can be hundreds of times the time to send a packet.
- Packet loss and the jitter added by network topology (wireless hops, virtual switches, satellite links) widen the gap further.
- Jitter, not congestion, now dominates the ACK timing that CUBIC and BBR use to pace TCP.
- Serialization time (1500-byte packet)
- Network jitter
Jitter shown at a typical 0.5 ms; wireless, virtualized and satellite paths often run higher.
| Link speed | Serialization time (1500-byte packet) | Network jitter |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Mbps | 1.2 ms | 500 µs |
| 100 Mbps | 120 µs | 500 µs |
| 1 Gbps | 12 µs | 500 µs |
| 10 Gbps | 1.2 µs | 500 µs |