I thought that too but last nights trace route basically blew my 'only happens during peak hours' claim out the water, it does get worse and significantly noticable during peak hour but the problem exists even now, when using ping plotter my first hop is ranging from 5-50ms which is just not normal, a range of 5-10ms would be alot more normal.
Target Name:
www.bbc.co.uk
IP: 212.58.227.79
Date/Time: 24/11/2006 10:12:12
1 10 ms 9 ms 47 ms 14 ms 9 ms 32 ms 40 ms 18 ms 7 ms 13 ms [10.234.92.1]
2 47 ms 47 ms 26 ms 23 ms 13 ms 13 ms 16 ms 11 ms 23 ms 14 ms nott-t2cam2-a-v635.inet.ntl.com [82.13.49.77]
3 20 ms 23 ms 55 ms 12 ms 30 ms 21 ms 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms 14 ms nott-t3core-1a-ge-110-0.inet.ntl.com [195.182.175.129]
4 33 ms 47 ms 32 ms 31 ms * 51 ms 12 ms 23 ms 17 ms 36 ms lee-bb-a-so-020-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.174.169]
5 19 ms 20 ms 49 ms 49 ms 43 ms 28 ms 51 ms 18 ms 22 ms 44 ms pop-bb-b-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.238]
6 30 ms 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms 44 ms 42 ms 22 ms 15 ms 53 ms 16 ms gfd-bb-a-so-010-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.137]
7 18 ms 21 ms 39 ms 17 ms 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 26 ms 54 ms gfd-bb-b-ge-000-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.6]
8 19 ms 20 ms 18 ms 48 ms 33 ms 26 ms 32 ms 39 ms 20 ms 35 ms tele-ic-1-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.78]
9 43 ms 52 ms 20 ms 19 ms 28 ms 19 ms 18 ms 60 ms 29 ms 20 ms [212.58.238.189]
10 20 ms 26 ms 20 ms 24 ms 29 ms 23 ms 23 ms 37 ms 23 ms 23 ms [212.58.238.133]
11 22 ms 46 ms 34 ms 24 ms 49 ms 23 ms 20 ms 23 ms 42 ms 21 ms [212.58.238.145]
12 27 ms 22 ms 26 ms 58 ms 20 ms 39 ms 64 ms 54 ms 26 ms 21 ms www9.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [212.58.227.79]
---------- Post added at 10:32 ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 ----------
Hate to sound like NTL india but have you got any firewalls/spyware/anti virus running? that maybe could be causing the trace route probs?