Montreal hamsters are tired, SE. Fix or breed new ones, please.

[Catwho]

Alright. I'm willing to be convinced. But -- tell me why the issues do not occur on the Level3 hops in Montreal, but only at SE's end. (For what it's worth, probably not much, my ISP claims that problem is clearly at the source, and not with any hops in between... so no help there.)

The problem lies with Level3, which routes between your ISP and the ISP that SE uses. It has to do with the hardware - Level3 really needs to upgrade the data center that handles packet switching between the US and Montreal, but they're hoping that the US cable providers will give them money to do so. The switches can't handle all the packets they're bombarded with, and buckle under the stress. This results in packet loss, which means some of the data between you and SE gets dropped, and you get lag in exchange because your client has to send it twice for the data to even go through - if it goes through at all. ("Rubber banding" is what happens when the data is lost to the ether permanently.)

Basically, it's a giant game of chicken, because Level3 oversold their data capacity to the US ISPs, and now they don't want to pay for the upgrades needed to meet their obligations.

Edit: Malzian's post about their DDoS detection being set too sensitively is actually quite plausible as well, and makes sense. Thanks for the insight!