Jitter, on IP satellite network, is a variation in packet transit delay, caused by queuing, contention and serialization effects on the path through the network. Serialization delay is the fixed delay required to clock a data frame onto the network interface. and it is directly related to the clock rate on the trunk; queuing delay is a variable delay and is dependent on the trunk speed and the state of the queue. There are random elements associated with the queuing delay.

best regards

You might want to take a look at these:

http://www.vsat-systems.com/Education/Satellite-Internet-Explained/Performance/Protocols-and-applications/

http://www.aticourses.com/sampler/IPNetworkingOverSatelite_CourseSampler.pdf

I don't know that jitter itself would be a big factor, but for sure latency is, at least for efficient use of TCP/IP. UDP, depending exactly how it is used, might not be impacted negatively. When using geosynchronous satellites, anyway, certain accommodations need to be made for the much longer RTT experienced, compared with terrestrial systems.

Another possible problem is your uplink speed. It might be very different from the downlink speed, which also impacts on TCP efficiency.

But I don't think jitter would necessarily be a problem particular to satellite.