While in the train from Bern to Zurich, I did a traceroute towards the server which currently hosts this weblog (it is located at Open Systems in Zurich). The connection starts on my laptop and is thethered via my cell to the Orange backbone.

HOST: Andreass-MacBook-Pro.local  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 172.20.10.1                0.0%     5    2.0  12.1   1.7  33.2  14.6
  2.|-- 10.8.8.67                  0.0%     5   52.2 373.4  52.2 1241. 504.8
  3.|-- 10.8.12.10                 0.0%     5   50.9 347.4  50.9 1143. 453.3
  4.|-- 192.168.249.201            0.0%     5   51.2 282.7  51.2 1042. 426.8
  5.|-- 192.168.253.191            0.0%     5   51.2 226.2  44.5 942.2 400.3
  6.|-- 192.168.250.203            0.0%     5   51.4 206.7  37.9 847.5 358.2
  7.|-- 10.10.10.10                0.0%     5   50.0 181.4  29.6 746.9 316.2
  8.|-- 10.255.200.1               0.0%     5   50.0 172.2  36.9 645.6 264.9
  9.|-- 193.251.248.145            0.0%     4   60.2  59.8  46.2  81.9  15.8
 10.|-- 193.251.240.53             0.0%     4   70.0  76.4  64.9 101.6  16.9
 11.|-- 146.188.112.77             0.0%     4   70.4  74.0  69.2  83.8   6.7
 12.|-- 146.188.5.1                0.0%     4   70.6  71.7  58.1  88.1  12.3
 13.|-- 146.188.4.194              0.0%     4   70.5  61.9  51.6  70.9  10.2
 14.|-- 146.188.64.74              0.0%     4   71.3  69.2  58.8  75.4   7.2
 15.|-- 213.156.230.29             0.0%     4   71.5  78.3  62.6 108.9  20.7
 16.|-- 213.156.229.8              0.0%     4   72.2  75.2  70.4  81.9   5.1
 17.|-- 213.156.229.222           25.0%     4   80.8  76.2  61.2  86.5  13.3

You can see that the traffic is passed through 8 different routers inside the Orange backbone (using IPs from all three RFC1918 ranges...) before it is let onto the Internet.
And then the real fun starts (let's use DNS names for this):

HOST: Andreass-MacBook-Pro.local  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1.|-- 172.20.10.1                0.0%     5    2.0  12.2   1.9  33.3  14.5
  2.|-- 10.8.8.67                  0.0%     5   44.2 345.6  27.0 1167. 494.2
  3.|-- 10.8.12.10                 0.0%     5   52.2 308.9  27.0 1104. 462.4
  4.|-- 192.168.249.201            0.0%     5   33.4 264.9  27.2 1014. 427.1
  5.|-- 192.168.253.191            0.0%     5   30.3 227.5  27.3 952.9 406.4
  6.|-- 192.168.250.203            0.0%     5   50.4 200.7  27.0 860.0 368.7
  7.|-- 10.10.10.10                0.0%     5   72.4 193.5  30.5 779.2 327.8
  8.|-- 10.255.200.1               0.0%     5   31.8 166.8  27.6 688.0 291.5
  9.|-- pos0-1-1-1.gencr1.geneve.  0.0%     4   50.8  55.0  47.6  67.1   8.6
 10.|-- pos14-0-1.pascr4.paris.op  0.0%     4   61.0  64.4  57.7  78.5   9.5
 11.|-- ge6-0-0.br2.par2.alter.ne  0.0%     4   70.8  56.3  48.4  70.8   9.9
 12.|-- so-2-3-0.xt2.zur3.alter.n  0.0%     4  108.9  65.6  48.0 108.9  29.2
 13.|-- pos2-0.gw4.zur4.alter.net  0.0%     4   51.7  55.5  50.3  68.8   8.8
 14.|-- uch200193-gw.customer.alt  0.0%     4  171.8  83.6  50.7 171.8  58.8
 15.|-- whale29.open.ch            0.0%     4  132.1  90.0  59.2 132.1  32.7
 16.|-- orca8.open.ch              0.0%     4   72.4  66.8  58.6  73.5   7.3
 17.|-- real.jaggi.info           25.0%     4   80.2  64.7  56.2  80.2  13.4

As we see, Orange injects their mobile data traffic into the Internet in Geneva (pos0-1-1-1.gencr1.geneve.).
Then it is first sent to Paris (pas14-0-1.pascr4.paris.op and ge6-0-0.br2.par2.alter.ne) and from there back to Zurich (so-2-3-0.xt2.yur3.alter.n and all the following hosts).

I can kind of understand that the traffic is routed via Geneva (main Orange infrastructure is there), but why is it sent to Paris? (especially since Geneva<->Zurich is the main Internet connection inside Switzerland where most of the countries fiber is buried).

I guess this explains why my mobile data speed is not always as fast as I like it to be...