[Sephiroth]

I think what TH meant to ask is during the humps, what were you doing? P2P; Uploading?

That would amplify on TBB whatever interference you get from others on your segment.

BTW, your traceroute - the first three hops take you past the Head End so I don't really understand your comment. The ping times from hop 4 onward are consistent and not at odds with peak times. I've seen much, much worse. But that consistency indicates that the bottleneck is at hop 4. I've confirmed that with my own tracert to your CMTS (at the local head end).

Tracing route to cove-cmts-12-ge130.network.virginmedia.net
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 27 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 6 ms 7 ms 7 ms 10.153.156.1
3 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms winn-core-2a-ae7-1196.network.virginmedia.net [6
2.253.123.93]
4 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms brnt-bb-1c-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253
.96.169]
5 * 44 ms 13 ms brhm-bb-1c-ae8-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253
.174.126]
6 39 ms 38 ms 39 ms brhm-core-2a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.2
53.174.74]
7 39 ms 36 ms 34 ms cove-cmts-12-ge130.network.virginmedia.net

Trace complete.

Spo that's one for VM to answer.