Delay

[Oakrest]

sounds like lag in your upstream. One of my pet-peeves about cable--you're upload/download packets get queued and sent in time slices. If there is heavy congestion on your segment, it can cause weird delays. This compounds an inherent problem with Windows own queue problems in it's TCP layer. Some have disabled the Nagle algorithm to help reduce lag in some games like WoW and such...not sure if it would have an impact on FFXI though. Could try it. There's some info on it at the speedguide.net site if you want to give it a shot--though, it may not do anything in Win7.

EDIT: Thanks for the reply and the speedguide suggestion - it sounded like your diagnosis was accurate, but I tried the Nagle regedit changes and it seems to have no effect/improvement \

EDIT2: Problem seems to have gone away... I have a hunch it is related to my weak upload as you suggest (it's only ~1Mbps up ATM) with cable, and someone in my neighbourhood on the same network (or several people) were probably adding to the mix over the days it happened. Thanks -