it's about simple conventional nuts-and-bolts technical knowledge, not an improvement on such knowledge brought by more advanced understanding of anything. There's no way someone who works in network administration wouldn't know that a "<1ms" ping coming from around the world is anomalous.

Actually, yes: I think this is correct.

But, I think I would have noticed something was wrong even if I hadn't worked in IT before. But I'm not certain of that.