The route changes we're seeing your data indicate that there is a router somewhere in your path that doesn't like multiple outstanding requests. There are about 6 routers that just "disappear", which is a sure sign that the data we're collecting is wrong. That doesn't help us troubleshoot much! Here's a knowledgebase article on what I suspect is happening:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/22

Unfortunately, the TCP packet type doesn't respect some of these settings as much as we'd like. In particular, all packets use the same thread, so changing the number of threads doesn't change the number of outstanding requests, so the only way you can control outstanding requests is to "pace" the outgoing requests.

Try changing the setting "Time interval between hop traces" to something on the order of "350", and then rerun the collection again. You'll need to have a trace interval of 5 seconds or longer (which will support roughly a 15 hop length).

Collect data like that and send us the results - we'll see if things change in a way that we can do anything else to improve the quality of the results. Once we get results that seem relatively real, we can try and build a case to communicate that information to whoever might be able to help solve things.

- Pete