Regarding high latency from Los Angeles/surrounding area

[Lithera]

This actually appears to be throttling.

If I go to any server other than the FFXIV server, the Palo Alto router responds in 50 ms or less. It's only when I attempt to reach the FFXIV server that this router exhibits dropped packets and high latency.

This would support the earlier claim that SE did not purchase enough bandwith across this particular trunk line. It's also possible that it really IS just a shitassed router that can't handle that much traffic going to/from the same place.