All in all it took 17 jumps to get from Palo Alto to Geneva. The trick used is kind of interesting. Normally this is set high, like 30, to keep lost packets from wondering for ever. Every time a packet makes a jump, the TTL is reduced by one. These are the times that are being recorded.
Congestion is a real concern for online marketers.
A site can become too popular - and suffer bad reputation if the performance just isn't up to snuff. Keynote systems is one company that monitors web sites. This link leads a user through a tutorial about their system, and shows how performance benchmarks can be used.