Well I also pinged fert and got high ping and packet loss. It was not level3 all by its lonesome.
Just to explain this better, for internet traffic, each hop will affect the traffic going to the subsequent hops.
It's like a relay race. If the 3rd person drops the baton, the final runner will never recieve the baton. That's what packet loss is like.
Similarly, if the 2nd runner is the one with butter fingers and drops the baton, it will never reach the 3rd and 4th runners.
To identify where the problem is, you go after the runner that first dropped the baton. He's the one ruining the show for everyone else.
Hopes that makes more sense.
So in your case, the earliest time we notice the problem is at hop 10 (do a few more tracert and see if you can spot packet drops even earlier). Remember, this will affect delivery to every subsequent hops all the way to fert.
Also, note that alot of routers are configured to treat ICMP (the type of traffic from ping and tracert) packets as low priority traffic, esp those directed at itself. Meaning if the router is busy, ICMP packets pinging it's health will be dropped first (it just won't give a reply). Those that it's supposed to route to the next hop, it will still try to route normally.
Hence, sometimes you see 1 router dropping packets in a tracert, while the subsequent routers still seems to be able to respond to your ICMPs normally. However, this is only provided that overtaxed/misconfigured/faulty router can actually route that ICMP packet along. If many larger packets comes along and the router gets overloaded, it'll simply drop them too.
Of course, most of the time, this effect actually adds to the usefulness of using ICMP packets to determine the health of your network.
