I don't see anything wrong with the routing from VM to Thinkbroadband:
root@d:~# traceroute pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com
traceroute to pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com (80.249.99.164), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 cpc5-sgyl34-2-0-gw.sgyl.cable.virginmedia.com (92.235.188.1) 5.163 ms 7.097 ms 8.761 ms
2 sgyl-core-1a-ge133.network.virginmedia.net (81.97.48.37) 5.964 ms 41.528 ms 6.700 ms
3 sgyl-core-2a-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net (195.182.178.90) 7.734 ms 7.896 ms 12.581 ms
4 manc-bb-1c-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net (81.97.48.77) 12.255 ms 13.735 ms 13.451 ms
5 manc-bb-1a-ae11-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.159.85) 12.103 ms 10.335 ms 19.811 ms
6 brnt-bb-1b-ae1-0.network.virginmedia.net (212.43.163.86) 27.316 ms 89.367 ms 29.024 ms
7 brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net (213.105.159.50) 19.143 ms 23.646 ms 20.348 ms
8 telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.185.74) 19.456 ms 18.329 ms 19.809 ms
9 linx-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net (195.66.226.240) 22.151 ms 20.265 ms 25.448 ms
10 gi0-24-10-star1.core-rs2.thdo.ncuk.net (80.249.97.9) 44.475 ms 23.248 ms 21.828 ms
11 pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com (80.249.99.164) 21.326 ms 20.095 ms 17.678 ms
Last I measured, jitter (an indirect measure of congestion) from VM to TBB's network was 30-40% lower than on other routes, e.g. to BBC or Multiplay. Now my connection's suddenly gotten a lot better I'll do some more measurements but I doubt the results will be much different.
---------- Post added at 14:59 ---------- Previous post was at 14:16 ----------
Yup. Ignoring the huge amount of base jitter on my line, the route from my VM connection to Thinkbroadband's network still performs better than 3 other test locations:
Statistics for pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com:
Packets: sent=10000, rcvd=10000, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 999.925545 sec
RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 16.510 / 21.404 / 157.329 / 6.470
Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=0.600, rcvd=0.600
Statistics for
www.multiplay.co.uk:
Packets: sent=10000, rcvd=10000, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 999.919494 sec
RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 17.300 / 22.524 / 141.443 / 7.286
Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=0.600, rcvd=0.600
Statistics for
www.bbc.co.uk:
Packets: sent=10000, rcvd=9996, error=0, lost=4 (0.0% loss) in 999.921639 sec
RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 17.740 / 23.225 / 153.303 / 7.477
Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=0.600, rcvd=0.599
Statistics for harnoncourt.inf.ed.ac.uk:
Packets: sent=10000, rcvd=10000, error=0, lost=0 (0.0% loss) in 999.930225 sec
RTTs of replies in ms: min/avg/max/dev: 28.086 / 33.845 / 158.170 / 7.048
Bandwidth in kb/sec: sent=0.600, rcvd=0.600