http://www.visualware.com/resources/tutorials/tracert.html

The MS is milliseconds and if you turn up with over 32 Hops you likely can't connect. The timed out in your #2 I'm not clear on yet. It did take me 40 seconds to load this topic and some today have been almost two minutes.

The mains site and the forums are hosted on 2 different servers.
So if one is slow it has no reflection on the speed of the other.

The main site is rarely slow but the forums regularly are. I am looking into this but it all points to the Yabb script.

An update will be coming soon.

However your tracert indicates a problem  local to your end. These things are usually very temporary nothing to be concerned about. Most of us have fairly primitive internet connections involving copper wire. 

Also 40 seconds and 2 minutes is plainly unacceptable. My browsers will time out after about 15 seconds and even 15 seconds is unacceptable. I do get the occasional time out but certainly not every day.

I am working on this.

Thanks Pete.