What term describes the variability of delay a packet experiences as it travels between network devices?

Jitter is the term that describes the variability of delay a packet experiences as it travels between network devices. In networking, consistent packet delivery times are essential for maintaining the quality of real-time services like voice and video. Jitter refers to the fluctuations in the time it takes for packets to arrive at their destination. High jitter can lead to packets arriving out of order or at inconsistent intervals, which can degrade the quality of streaming media or online gaming, for instance.

Latency, while related, refers specifically to the total time it takes for a packet to travel from the source to the destination, not its variability. Buffering involves temporarily storing data to accommodate variations in processing or transmission, which can be an effect of high jitter but is not the term that specifies the variability itself. Throughput measures the amount of data successfully transmitted over a network in a given time frame, which does not directly address the timing variability of individual packets. Thus, jitter is the appropriate term to describe the inconsistency in packet delay.