so why does it take me 16 hops to get to bbc.co.uk and the time taken to get to london is about 6-7 ms. even he gets to bbc.co.uk from sodding finland in 12 hops. whos to blame
Another major difference is that some ISPs use what is known as
L2TP tunnelling. L2TP hides a lot of the core network hops. ISPs such as Plusnet, IDnet, AAISP use L2TP so therefore any of the routing between the exchange to the ISPs gateway is hidden.
You can see from ejs's example that hop 2 is the isp gateway in London. Without doubt there will have been a lot of routing in there that doesnt show.
BT retail doesn't use L2TP and you can see every single router that you pass through before you get to London.
It's highly likely that someone who is with say Plusnet and on the same exchange as you will travel a very similar path as you across the core network up until the London PoP.. the difference is that your tracert will likely show about 7 additional hops that has been hidden for the person on Plusnet.
So number of hops isnt always important, its the time.