Lag spikes all day every day (Gilgamesh)

[PopowuduNanawudu]

Hey all, I've been getting ~4-second-long lag spikes intermittently ever since the DDoS attacks were announced by Square Enix, so for about a month now. It's making it impossible to run anything more difficult than a dungeon, since they happen less than a minute apart sometimes. It happens both in and out of instances (so long, crafting macros).

Here's my basic info:
* ISP: Comcast (cable connection)
* Speed (via SpeedTest): 30Mbps down, 6Mbps up, 12ms latency
* Location: New Jersey, US
* World: Gilgamesh
If you need any more info, please ask. I'm running a core i5-2500K (3.3GHz) quad core, 6 GB of RAM, on 64-bit Windows 7, and my graphics card is a Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, which has had no problems running the game smoothly until now (albeit at lower settings) (I've been playing since 2.0 launched, with maybe a few months downtime here and there)

Could my problem be that the attacks are still going on? I don't recall ever seeing a notice that they were resolved on the Lodestone.

I've also run many pings and tracerts to Gilgamesh's server. Oddly enough I don't get any ping problems directly there, but when I run a tracert, packets appear to be caught up in a Montreal router. (Whether or not the router is actually just refusing too many ICMP requests is beyond my knowledge) Here's the result of a typical WinMTR run over about ten minutes:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                             (router)    -    0 |  826 |  826 |    0 |    0 |    6 |    0 |
|                   (removed for privacy) -    1 |  802 |  796 |   11 |   42 | 2009 |   28 |
|                   (removed for privacy) -    1 |  807 |  802 |    8 |   20 |  453 |  162 |
|xe-4-0-3-0-ar03.eastwindsor.nj.panjde.comcast.net -    1 |  796 |  789 |   11 |   25 | 4455 |   12 |
|he-2-14-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net -    1 |  811 |  807 |   12 |   22 |  348 |   15 |
|          ae12.edge1.NewYork2.level3.net -    2 |  788 |  779 |   12 |   26 | 4516 |   12 |
|      ae-11-11.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net -   48 |  282 |  147 |    0 |   45 |  429 |  194 |
|      ae-11-11.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net -   50 |  278 |  141 |    0 |   50 |  510 |   32 |
|   ORMUCO-COMM.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net -    1 |  811 |  807 |   20 |   28 |  353 |   25 |
|                            192.34.76.10 -    1 |  808 |  804 |   19 |   35 | 4007 |   22 |
|                          199.91.189.242 -    1 |  803 |  797 |   20 |   29 |  348 |   25 |
|                           199.91.189.31 -    1 |  811 |  807 |   20 |   29 |  354 |   27 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

As you can see I'm getting around 50% packet loss to the router in Montreal, which appears to be looping back to itself before going on to the next hop. (I don't know much about networking) But again, when I do a ping -t to the Gilgamesh server address, I come up with no problems--consistent 21~23ms latency.

I also seem to be getting some packet loss to Comcast's local switch this morning, though only at 1%--this is a separate problem that I need to have resolved regarding some of the lines in the area (which I'm pretty sure were not repaired fully after Hurricane Sandy two years ago). The 4-second-long lag spikes only started happening a month ago and seem to be independent of that anyway.

Anyone have any ideas what steps I should take to resolve this, if any? Thanks for your help.

[Raist]

In that trace you are actually showing high spikes and packet loss before you leave NJ/NY and while still in Comcast's network. It starts right at your gateway where you removed the IP addresses.

[PopowuduNanawudu]

You're right, I'm getting lag spikes just to the local switch in the neighborhood. I'm thinking that's what's causing it. I don't remember if it got this way around this time last year, but it could be the cold settling in and disrupting the lines or something. Guess it's time to call Comcast with the information.