This looks like a good time to further clarify, since everyone that I speak to ingame appears very confused on this issue as well.


-The internet is a "mesh network", not a straight connection between point A and point B (there are many points of failure [not just your ISP and SquareEnix] ).
-Data is not guaranteed to reach its destination intact, at all, or even to arrive in order. (the internet is inherently unreliable)
-The path that data flows is not necessarily optimal, nor consistent (The internet is "not" connection-oriented, only protocols simulates this behavior | path can change from time to time, automatically, depending on the metrics / rules used by each gateway forwarding data). [hop count, load, loss, 'cost', a combination of the above, etc]
-protocols such as TCP buffer, re-sequence, and retransmit data (simulate a reliable connection over an unreliable one) ... if a single packet is missed and needs to be re-transmit [or arrives out of order], NOTHING at the application layer will be received "until" the missed packet is re-transmit and received by the remote end. [which can cause bursty-behavior, even from a tiny hickup of a single packet being missed]


You can argue if you want that SquareEnix picked the wrong protocol for FFXIV, and that they should've used UDP rather than TCP.. This is indeed a legitimate argument, despite that virtually no MMORPG's in existence use UDP. (yet, latency critical games such as FPS's tend to)

--If the game's netcode was written with UDP rather than TCP, then data not received on the remote end could be discarded rather than re-transmit (for example: where an enemy "was" doesn't matter, only where it "is") ... this would permit the game to continue functioning with deemed non-critical data, in addition to updates being received out of order (can reduce perceived latency, accelerate connection recovery, and grant some immunity to packet loss).


*Problems with the internet, however, are not the fault of SquareEnix and imo -- fairly out of their control.

SE can do the same thing that your ISP can in placing pressure on owners of problematic gateways (as a business their complaints have more bearing than you do as a consumer). There's not much beyond this that they can do, however, short of moving all their servers to a physically different location (different datacenter / fairly impractical).