I notice that you are in Sweden, is it possible that the hop 6 to 7 increase in your trace route is due to crossing the Atlantic and continental USA? Remembering that the DreamHost servers are located in California.
I see a similar thing here when my packets cross the Pacific (I am in Australia). Unfortunately, it is mostly due to the distances involved and the speed of light, not much we can do about it I’m afraid.
[color=#0000CC]Tracing route to dreamhost.com [66.33.201.141]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 15 ms 12 ms 13 ms lns2-loopback-0.Melbourne.netspace.net.au [203.17.101.66]
3 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms core1-cr-gigether-5-2-11.Melbourne.netspace.net.au [203.10.110.195]
4 15 ms 13 ms 13 ms 408.ge-1-1-0.GW3.MEL1.ALTER.NET [203.166.93.197]
5 14 ms 13 ms 16 ms 323.AT-3-0-1.XR1.MEL1.ALTER.NET [210.80.33.153]
6 28 ms 30 ms 28 ms so-0-1-0.XT1.SYD2.ALTER.NET [210.80.33.5]
7 185 ms 185 ms 184 ms 0.so-5-0-0.IR1.LAX12.Alter.Net [210.80.49.149]
8 192 ms 192 ms 192 ms POS2-0.IR1.LAX9.ALTER.NET [137.39.31.222]
9 189 ms 191 ms 194 ms 0.so-5-2-0.TL1.LAX9.ALTER.NET [152.63.0.146]
10 189 ms 190 ms 263 ms 0.so-1-0-0.XL1.LAX9.ALTER.NET [152.63.115.141]
11 190 ms 188 ms 188 ms POS6-0.BR3.LAX9.ALTER.NET [152.63.115.1]
12 192 ms 193 ms 190 ms so3-0-0-622M.ar1.LAX2.gblx.net [208.51.134.1]
13 190 ms 192 ms 193 ms so0-3-0-622M.ar1.LAX3.gblx.net [67.17.64.49]
14 193 ms 194 ms 194 ms GE1-GX.dreamhost.com [67.17.162.162]
15 194 ms 194 ms 193 ms dreamhost.com [66.33.201.141]
16 193 ms 195 ms 193 ms dreamhost.com [66.33.201.141]
Trace complete.[/color]
Also, many routers are configured to give a low priority to ICMP traffic, this can result in a lower ping response from such routers during time of high traffic, even though normal traffic will not be greatly delayed.
Mark
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