Lag spikes

Hi there guys, need some help here, I have been of late getting bad lag spikes playing Black ops, I know where the problem is, but I am not sure who is liable for it, the host is gameservers using 3rd party level 3 for routing I think, so who do I complain to here? should it be my isp or should it be the game host, here is a traceroute to the server I play on, as you can see everything is fine until it get to hop 11


Tracing route to 173.199.77.68.choopa.net [173.199.77.68]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 50 ms 99 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254]
2 33 ms 32 ms 31 ms 217.47.211.58
3 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms 217.32.95.145
4 38 ms 37 ms 36 ms 213.1.69.74
5 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms 31.55.165.39
6 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms 31.55.165.107
7 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms acc1-10GigE-1-2-0.mr.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.250.70]
8 46 ms 46 ms 44 ms core1-te0-12-0-1.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.250.22]
9 43 ms 51 ms 42 ms transit2-xe1-0-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.200.134]
10 43 ms 44 ms 43 ms t2c4-xe-10-2-0.uk-eal.eu.bt.net [166.49.168.41]
11 94 ms 93 ms 93 ms xe-8-0-0.edge4.London2.Level3.net [212.187.192.61]
12 90 ms 89 ms 90 ms ae-3-3.ebr1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.141.189]
13 92 ms 96 ms 100 ms ae-59-114.csw1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.153.126]
14 88 ms 88 ms 87 ms ae-1-51.edge4.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.74]
15 44 ms 45 ms 44 ms 195.50.122.154
16 80 ms 79 ms 81 ms 173.199.77.68.choopa.net [173.199.77.68]

Trace complete.

This is my trace:

1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 6.120 ms 2.544 ms 2.028 ms
2 * * *
3 * 10.1.2.161 (10.1.2.161) 11.255 ms 10.230 ms
4 * 10.1.4.249 (10.1.4.249) 11.078 ms 9.026 ms
5 ethernet21-1.ar9.lon3.gblx.net (64.212.32.245) 18.017 ms 10.933 ms 16.460 ms
6 4.68.110.157 (4.68.110.157) 7.833 ms 8.341 ms 13.244 ms
7 vl-3501-ve-115.csw1.london1.level3.net (4.69.166.129) 17.305 ms 8.635 ms 18.694 ms
8 * ae-1-51.edge4.london1.level3.net (4.69.139.74) 10.283 ms 12.611 ms
9 195.50.122.154 (195.50.122.154) 10.291 ms 10.447 ms 8.724 ms
10 173.199.77.68.choopa.net (173.199.77.68) 8.204 ms 11.929 ms 9.019 ms

My ISP is Be There and I'm based in north London. I don't know a helluva lot about these kind of issues but a few things I would certainly recommend are:

1. Trying different game servers/game if necessary - I'd suspect all are affected if it's your ISP
2. Asking in your own ISP forum (BT presumably?)
3. Asking on the game server's own community website - there must be a lot more people affected judging by the trace you've given

Well, I doubt I can help really. Maybe someone else from the game forum can though. We occasionally get a few knowledgeable chaps come in. But not often.

thanks for the response Spookish, I have since found out that level 3 are indeed used by gameservers for routing game traffic, this has been an off and on going problem with level 3, will just have to keep annoying some people til they get it fixed or re-route the traffic