There are some interesting characteristics here. First off, there's the difference in the final destination's packet loss and the previous hop's packet loss. This is almost certainly occuring because of some difference in the return route.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this. 1) The data is coming back through a route that we can't see when monitoring from your side, but it' has additional latency and packet loss when that network link is added. Or ... 2) Because of oversaturation, ICMP TTL expired packets are down-prioritized and dropped.

I can't say for sure which of these conditions are in play from the information I have. Remember, though, that the intermediate hops only offer information about possible problems. We don't really care about the characteristics of performance at the intermediate hops unless that contributes to the final destination. A lot of the badness in the intermediate hops is *not* being translated to the final destination, so we can only use it as "clues".

What we *can* say is that your packet loss and latency at the final destination are unacceptable, and that the link between hops 4 and 5 is the likely culprit. When I trace back from me to you, the link between sprintlink and setarnet also looks like the problem. We show very similar latency, but slightly different packet loss characteristics.

All evidence that I see points to a problem with the link between Sprintlink and Setarnet. It looks like you are a customer of Setarnet, so you should contact them with your problem. It might be a problem with the physical connection between these two services (especially if you're in Aruba where Setarnet's contact information shows them).

You don't have a whole lot of choices here besides just letting Setarnet know there's a problem, and then encouraging them to fix it. If they don't acknowledge the problem (or the severity of the problem), use your collected PingPlotter data to convince them, along with a description of your VoIP problems.

Good luck! Let us know what Setarnet has to say about this!

- Pete