Since tuesday approximately this lag has appeared out of nowhere. Everything was always fine, and now suddenly out of nowhere I'm in an instance and people will freeze for a few seconds and then everything speeds up to catch up. Sometimes it's short, like half a second, or a second. When it gets extreme I've seen it last 20 seconds or more. I've noticed something curious: it only happens in instances (like garuda ex, or ifrit ex). However if I'm in the Gridania marketplace, where there are lots more people walking around and interacting than inside an instance, everything goes smoothly and there's no freezing/catching up.

I downloaded and installed WTFast and this solved the issue. However I don't think I should have to pay for a third party service to use a game I'm paying for, when there have never been lag issues till two days ago. Another thing to report is that my ping to the montreal datacenter has remained unchanged; it's the same as it was before the trouble started. Somehow I think the problem is with SE's instance servers. I've also heard from numerous other users they're having this same problem, and it started at the same time. The problem is not with my ISP as I've tested ping and lost packets and bandwidth with other services and everything is fine.