Sudden traceroute time jump between ISP and requested server

I've been having trouble these past few months with certain websites timing out or acting really slow, so I decided to do some traceroute testing. One particular website I try to access called "vp.crossmark.com" is very bad about its loading time. Following is the tracert output for the URL above:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]>tracert vp.crossmark.com

Tracing route to vp.crossmark.com [64.128.22.182]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    12 ms     9 ms     4 ms  router.asus.com [192.168.1.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *      324 ms    10 ms  208-180-188-197.suddenlink.net [208.180.188.197]

  4     *       56 ms    55 ms  173-219-224-142.suddenlink.net [173.219.224.142]

  5     *      364 ms   237 ms  173-219-227-44.suddenlink.net [173.219.227.44]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10    36 ms    37 ms    40 ms  dal1-ar1-ae21-0.us.twtelecom.net [66.192.243.70]

 11     *        *       43 ms  50.58.193.110
 12     *        *       42 ms  test-vp.crossmark.com [64.128.22.182]

Trace complete.

Here's another for comparision:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]> tracert vp.crossmark.com

Tracing route to vp.crossmark.com [64.128.22.182]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  router.asus.com [192.168.1.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *       16 ms  208-180-188-197.suddenlink.net [208.180.188.197]

  4     *        *       99 ms  173-219-224-142.suddenlink.net [173.219.224.142]

  5   256 ms   243 ms     *     173-219-227-44.suddenlink.net [173.219.227.44]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *       18 ms  ae-1-60.edge5.Dallas3.Level3.net [4.69.145.14]
  9    21 ms    20 ms    23 ms  dal2-pr1-ae1-0.us.twtelecom.net [64.128.212.65]

 10    42 ms    37 ms    38 ms  dal1-ar1-ae21-0.us.twtelecom.net [66.192.243.70]

 11    42 ms    41 ms    43 ms  50.58.193.110
 12   121 ms     *       42 ms  test-vp.crossmark.com [64.128.22.182]

Trace complete.

I noticed that the ping time between the suddenlink servers and the servers that connect to crossmark takes a massive jump into the 200-400 range. I've repeated this a few times and I constantly find massive jumps in ping time or even several timeouts at the same point between networks.

I'm wondering if this is a sign of connectivity issues between my ISP and the servers I am requesting. This website isn't the only one doing this by the way, but most larger sites like google, youtube, or wikipedia make the jump without sudden ping time increase.

Ryuluce

Posted 2015-10-20T22:59:01.597

Reputation: 15

Just tried a tracert, didn't do it for me, also came with a diff URL but the same ip – Kilisi – 2015-10-20T23:24:30.667

This isn't unusual, by the way. Modern Internet core routers are heavily optimized to be efficient forwarders, the most efficient we can possibly make them. Sending ICMP responses takes a much slower path that typically requires passing through a CPU that gives a much higher priority to other tasks like updating the forwarding table. – David Schwartz – 2015-10-20T23:24:32.303

Sudden traceroute time jump between ISP and requested server

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