Re: hops
Some servers which your trace is passing through block icmp requests and so don't show their own replies, but still pass on the replies and forwards of others, hence you're seeing "timed out" messages.
99% of those pings above are <25ms - looks like the route your packets are taking to their target destination is fine. Certainly playable.
Try pinging the target destination with larger packets:
ping -l 2048 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
|