Pretend you are my postman on my section of a make-believe network of roads we'll call The Internet. Just for laughs, I want to see how long it takes for mail to get to Snoopcester, even though we have no idea where he is (the beauty of The Internet).

I give you three test envelopes with these instructions and you pass them to a man on a horse - Man #1. Man #1 has no idea how to get to Snoopcester, but he knows someone he can go ask (Man #2) who in turn knows another person who knows a bit more than he does (Man #3) and so on and so forth...

You give instructions to Man #1 that each time he passes the envelopes on to another man, each man is to report back on how long it took (in milliseconds 'ms' ) for the envelopes to pass between them. Yes, they are really fast horses! Each man has a similar length of road to travel, so we expect the times to be similar for each envelope, on each section of road.

That was the Tracert Saga, featuring:

Paula as Firefox
Snoopcester as Google
Ironclad as Wireless Internet Connection
ISP as Man #1
Random Internet Servers as Man #2, Man #3 and so on..
Internet Packets as Envelopes Containing Snail Mail

From what you describe above, your #1 is asleep in a bar somewhere, while #7 stopped for a leak and a cup of tea. Doesn't necessarily mean an issue, but if they are doing it every time then you'd start to get annoyed. That you are having issues at home and work with your #1 and #2 could indicate something wrong with your network card - if possible I would test it out by using another network connection. Can you plug in, or borrow someone's Network card?