If you are torrenting while playing, no sympathies for you there - do your downloads while sleeping?

Regarding Aion, Aion servers are region based so tends to be closer to you. FF servers are all in Japan.
And were you on Aion during open beta? Connection was so bad it was unplayable -> Turned out an ISP (forgot which) was filtering out traffic to their servers on the east coast.
Unless the issue lies with SE's data center and the ISP they use, I highly doubt they can do anything for you.

That said, I also encounter these errors from time to time. Never seen it on FFXI but luckily for me, it is rare enough that it doesn't interfere with my gameplay. Usually happen during log-in but re-trying will get past the issue.