What are the best practices for maintaining a high-quality video call regarding latency, jitter, and packet loss?

Zero jitter and zero packet loss are theoretically ideal but practically unachievable on any real IP network, making this an unrealistic benchmark rather than a best practice guideline.

Cisco recommends less than 150 ms one-way end-to-end delay, less than 30 ms jitter, and less than 1 percent packet loss (with 3 percent as an outer threshold) for acceptable video quality. These values balance real-world network conditions with the human perception thresholds for video and audio synchronization, keeping the experience smooth and intelligible.

A 150-400 ms one-way delay exceeds the recommended 150 ms threshold, introducing noticeable conversational lag, and 5 percent packet loss would cause visible video artifacts and audio degradation.

A 500 ms one-way delay is far above acceptable limits, causing severe conversational disruption, and combined with 5 percent packet loss, it would make a video call nearly unusable.