pi4t: Is there any reason not to bounce a call off as many servers as possible, even if you don't have access (or it's a public access server)? I'm guessing it has something to do with bandwidth, but would like to know for sure.
Public access servers are useless to bounce through because they have no security. It's really not worth the effort of even adding them to your map, as a trace will go through them almost instantly. Internal Service Machines, on the other hand, are great even if you have no access at all, because the more security systems they have (proxies & firewalls) the longer it will take. It's even better to route through Mainframes and LANs, though usually I don't bother; I just stick with ISMs. Like A_Future_Pilot suggested, just add *everything*. Once you get lots of bounces through lots of machines with user and admin access, you can get 400+ trace times even when you're hacking mainframes.
Call bouncing tricks:
1. Register an account at all the banks and at the Stock Market. It really helps even if you never use them. You should do this as soon as you finish the test mission.
2. In most of my games there has been at least one ISM that never reset its password, so once you get admin access there you'll keep it forever. (You'll have to find it yourself, though, as it changes every game.)
3. Prioritize copy database missions, as they give you access to fileservers. The fileservers are unhackable because they don't have an admin account, so that's the only way to get access to them.
4. If a "trace a hacker" mission starts at an ISM, you'll get permanent non-admin access to that particular machine.
5. The Uplink ISM never changes its admin password, either. It's a pretty tricky hack to make, but if you manage it correctly then you'll not only get an extra permanent admin account, but you'll also get access to an extra fileserver later.
6. If you have a particularly hard hack to make and you don't have great equipment yet (say you need to crack an elliptical cypher but don't have a lot of processor power, or you need to break proxy+firewall but can't afford the Connection Analyser) just crack a few ISMs immediately beforehand. Your clearance will get revoked in 8 hours or so, but you should have more than enough time to get your job done. This tends to clog up the mission screen with a bunch of extra "trace a hacker" missions, but that's hardly a problem.