Thanks for the response. Hop 3 is strange indeed, hop 2 is our DSL modem so what firewall can this hop 3 be? Something in Telkom's exchange or what? Anyone have an idea?
The trace again...
Tracing route to afrihost.co.za [197.242.144.102]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 2 ms 10.0.1.1
2 3 ms 1 ms 1 ms 10.0.0.1
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 137 ms 76 ms 98 ms 41.181.178.6
5 20 ms 19 ms 19 ms ipc-recieve-jh-1a.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.178.5]
6 20 ms 20 ms 19 ms qux-jh-dca-2.za-b.za.mtnbusiness.net [41.181.165.115]
7 19 ms 19 ms 18 ms jh-dca-2.za--qux-q.za.mtnbusiness.net [196.31.180.4]
8 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms jh-cr-2.za--jh-dca-2.za-a.mtnns.net [196.44.0.224]
9 542 ms 20 ms 19 ms 196.44.31.99
10 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms 196.31.220.8
11 21 ms 20 ms 21 ms 196.31.220.25
12 21 ms 20 ms 19 ms 196.31.63.206
13 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms vl9-ah-ha-2.za.mtnbusiness.net [196.30.42.133]
14 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms cms-gm.afrihost.com [197.242.144.102]
It's hard to confirm but the spikes in latency could indicate a line or exchange issue. We're seeing a lot of traces where the BRAS times out, this is probably due to being upgrades to BNG's and not configured to respond to ICMP traffic, but makes the traces harder to read. From the trace whatever is causing the latency is intermittent, but the sudden jump to 542ms is very concerning