US traffic congestion usually comes from public peering points like MAE East (where most European ISPs meet the US ones).
If you (or your hosting provider) buy your connectivity from the only two companies with a real global IP network - Worldcom and Cable & Wireless - then service should be better because both have an enormous number of self-provisioned private peering points, which are much more reliable (and less congested) than the public ones.
However, the network managers need to be competant and get rid of traffic destined for other networks as soon as possible.
Apparently Telstra doesn't peer properly with Worldcom, for example. Burst.Net gets its connectivity from Worldcom, and Telstra has an interconnect with Worldcom here in Australia. However, Telstra seems to prefer to carry the traffic to the US before giving it to them (BTW, those interested in the cable discussion in "Big Pong" thread can see from the traceroute below that Telstra has abandoned Southern Cross in favour of the new AJC cable and HKT's capacity on TPC5 via a cable switch in Guam) :
Code:
C:\>tracert [url]www.burst.net[/url]
Tracing route to root.burst.net [66.96.192.201]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gateway.jwalker.com [10.0.0.1]
2 28 ms 24 ms 23 ms 172.31.18.24
3 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms sydney1-atm.nsw.bigpond.net.au [61.9.192.145]
4 28 ms 25 ms 27 ms chw-matrix-r01.nsw.ipm.bigpond.com [203.18.76.8]
5 25 ms 27 ms 26 ms GigabitEthernet5-0-0.chw16.Sydney.telstra.net [39.130.7.9]
6 24 ms 23 ms 22 ms GigabitEthernet4-2.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net [203.50.6.205]
7 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms GigabitEthernet0-2.pad-core5.Sydney.telstra.net [203.50.6.202]
8 81 ms 86 ms 94 ms GigabitEthernet0-0.syd-core02.Sydney.net.reach.com [203.50.13.250]
9 246 ms 250 ms 247 ms pos4-3.wil-core01.net.reach.com [202.84.249.137]
10 254 ms 256 ms 255 ms 202.84.249.177
11 251 ms 255 ms 248 ms ge1-0.paix04.hkt.net [202.84.251.20]
12 276 ms 263 ms 267 ms Serial2-4.GW9.PAO1.ALTER.NET [157.130.194.73]
13 263 ms 259 ms 263 ms 172.ATM4-0.XR2.PAO1.ALTER.NET [152.63.52.78]
14 259 ms 263 ms 263 ms 0.so-0-0-0.XL2.PAO1.ALTER.NET [152.63.54.77]
15 259 ms 256 ms 259 ms 0.so-3-0-0.TL2.SAC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.54.10]
16 332 ms 327 ms 332 ms 0.so-6-0-0.TL2.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.13.9]
17 321 ms 321 ms 324 ms 0.so-6-0-0.XL2.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.38.74]
18 325 ms 344 ms 334 ms 0.so-0-0-0.XR2.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.35.117]
19 327 ms 335 ms 325 ms 184.at-5-0-0.XR2.DCA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.33.29]
20 332 ms 332 ms 329 ms 194.ATM5-0.GW8.PHL1.ALTER.NET [152.63.39.213]
21 336 ms 340 ms 336 ms hostnoc-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.223.162]
22 338 ms 344 ms 371 ms burst.net [66.96.192.201]
Trace complete.