Hop 3 has a consistently high jitter of 250-300ms. Jitter looks acceptable throughout the rest of the trace. Is this something to be concerned about or—like latency and packet loss—only really has significance when the number at the source and/or destination are affected?

Hello there Skooma,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

Jitter is the amount of variation in latency/response times from a hop or target. Because it compares the variation of latencies, the Jitter number wouldn't necessarily carry through to the final destination (target).

When Jitter is calculated at the final hop, its value may be higher or even lower than a previous hop that exhibits significant Jitter.

If the values are acceptable at the final hop, that's all that matters! If you're interested, we cover Jitter in more detail here:

http://www.pingman.com/kb/57

I hope that answers your question - if you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out!

All the best,
-Austin