The background color you're talking about is the grey color that the knowledgebase article is talking about. The vertical "background color" lines you're seeing on hops 11,12 and 13 are *exactly* the same ones we're discussing there as being caused by route oscillation. When that router isn't participating in routing data, the background color shows through the graph.

We talk about the graphs and colors to some extent here.

http://www.pingplotter.com/tutorial/TheInterfaceGraphs.html

The lighter colors on the graph correspond to red / yellow / green for the bad / warning / good ranges you have configured.