Traceroute hits destination on fourth hop, then does 15 more

Traceroute is showing that I hit my destination (147.21.65.42) on the fourth hop. So why does it do 15 more hops?

From my location, the pipe to this server is an MPLS virtual private network. I'm thinking that might be affecting what traceroute reports.

C:\>tracert example.com

Tracing route to example.com [147.21.65.42]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     4 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  172.18.41.254
  2     8 ms    10 ms     8 ms  192.168.208.30
  3    14 ms     8 ms     7 ms  192.168.208.50
  4     8 ms     8 ms     8 ms  147.21.65.42
  5    16 ms    15 ms    16 ms  147.21.65.42
  6    55 ms    54 ms    55 ms  147.21.65.42
  7    55 ms    55 ms    55 ms  147.21.65.42
  8    55 ms    55 ms    54 ms  147.21.65.42
  9    55 ms    55 ms    55 ms  147.21.65.42
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19   143 ms   135 ms   119 ms  147.21.65.42

Trace complete.

Solution 1:

MPLS is well known to mangle Traceroute results: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk436/tk428/technologies_tech_note09186a008020a42a.shtml