Originally Posted by
Jeeqbit
There is a super thread in the Technical Support forum about this. It was found to be some sort of political issue in the US that impacts one of the internet nodes. SE doesn't have control over it but it is right before the hops to the NA servers.
It's like a road and a path being dug up right in front of a shop you own. You have no control over that, yet it impacts your business greatly.
SE usually tries to address these problems by contacting them, especially if it's a DDoS, but since it's been a political issue it seems to have been harder to achieve.
You can get around it with a VPN anyway. I got a significant ping reduction even from my normal ping using one actually. It's not even a gaming VPN either and it works great.