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Data traveling across the internet is broken into small packets, and occasionally some of them simply don't arrive — this is packet loss.
Common Causes
Network congestion, faulty hardware along the route, wireless interference, or an overloaded server can all cause packets to be dropped.
How It Feels
Packet loss shows up as stuttering video calls, incomplete page loads, or connections that seem to randomly stall — TCP's reliability mechanisms retransmit lost packets, but that retransmission takes time.
Diagnosing It
Tools like ping and mtr (a combination of ping and traceroute) can reveal packet loss and roughly where along the network path it's occurring.
