Sorry.. posted that link real fast while at work. Just got home and did the dinner thing, and wanted to expand a bit on this process.
Just a couple quick notes. That guide walks you through creating a single text file with the results of the trace in a protected area on the hard drive (why you need to launch it as an admin). This means you will have trouble editing and deleting it later without using admin privileges also. The command given also overwrites the file as well, so you will lose your previous results unless you copy it or rename it. You can change the command to use double symbols (>> in stead of just >) to make it append all results in the file--so if you run it twice it will save both traces back to back.
Alternatively, you can make a batch file to run the commands and put them into a "normal" folder that you can edit/rename/delete at will. Then you can make a short cut to the batch file and run it at will without having to manually open the CMD prompt (with admin privilege) and type the commands out and all. I will paste in a sort of how-to for setting something up so you guys can generate such reports a bit easier.
If you want to just run the commands and see the results on screen right away, remove the extra part from the > symbol to the end. Note also that you don't have to use an IP address. You can also use the registered DNS names like www.google.com, or in the case of the Chaos lobby you can use neolobby06.ffiv.com. So you could open a CMD prompt and just run this:
Code:
tracert neolobby06.ffxiv.com
And you would see the results of the trace unfold on your screen. You can do the same thing with the ping and pathping commands as well.
To copy the results you can just right-click in the window and select "Select All" to highlight everything on the screen and then press the <ENTER> key to copy all the highlighted text to your clipboard for pasting into a document/email/forum post. You can also toggle a mode to click/drag your mouse over specific text to highlight it by right-clicking in the window and selecting "Mark". Once you have your selection highlighted, hit the <ENTER> key to copy it to the clipboard for pasting.
Now...to set something up to give some automation to generating the reports. The first part of this may seem a bit odd for those more familiar with windows file creation, but I am putting up a way to do this via DOS for a specific reason. Not everyone's view settings will be set up to display file extensions and such, and if not careful you may actually create a .bat.txt file instead of a .bat file. This old-school method makes sure we get a .bat file for use. It is also a handy way of automatically creating a folder and the file in one shot right where it is needed for the script I will provide.
First, let us create a new folder and the blank file for making the batch file we will be running. Open a command prompt (search/run box, type the letters cmd, and run the command it finds called "cmd.exe"). We are going to do things a bit differently, and the behavior may look a bit strange, but it is behaving so by design. The command I will give you will create a new folder (C:\XIV_Trace) and then start a sort of terminal file editing mode to create a blank file. After running the command, you will need to hit the <ENTER> key one time to insert a blank line, and then press the key combination CTRL-z, then press the <ENTER> key. On screen you will see it put up a couple blank lines and then the characters ^z, and then it will respond that 1 file was copied.
Ok, now highlight and copy this entire command string to your clipboard and then right-click in the CMD window to past it into the command line and hit the <ENTER> key, then <ENTER>, CTRL-Z, <ENTER>:
Code:
cd c:\ & MD XIV_Trace & CD c:\XIV_Trace & copy con xiv_trace.bat
Type the word "exit" and then press the <ENTER> key to close the CMD window.
Now open your file browser and navigate into the new folder we just created at the root of the C:\ drive called "XIV_Trace and open it. You should see a file in there with a black and white terminal icon that looks like the CMD window called "xiv_trace.bat". Depending on your view settings, you may not see the .bat extension. May not have the CMD icon either for that matter. The important thing is that you see a file named "xiv_trace".
We want to edit this file in Notepad by right-clicking it and selecting the "Edit" command. If for some reason your file browser is not recognizing the file type and giving you the Edit option, select to "Open with..." and select notepad or wordpad or whatever your favorite text editor may be. Once it is open in a text editor, copy this entire text into that file and then save and exit it:
Code:
ECHO OFF
CLS
ECHO. >>C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
ECHO %time% %date% >>C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
ECHO Tracing path to neoloby06.ffxiv.com
TRACERT neolobby06.ffxiv.com>>C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
ECHO Pinging pinging neolobby06.ffxiv.com 25 times.
ping -n 25 neolobby06.ffxiv.com>>C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
ECHO Traces/Pings Complete
ECHO. >>C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
pause
start C:\XIV_Trace\FFXIV_TRACE.TXT
Now right-click that file and click "Send to", "Desktop (create shortcut)". Now you can run this handy batch file right from the deskop. It may not appear to be doing anything, but it is tracing your route to the Chaos lobby and then pinging it 25 times, placing the results in a text file in that same folder called "FFXIV_TRACE.TXT", complete with a date/time stamp for when it started, and some double-spacing between the results. It will give a couple messages as it is working and then pause when the file is complete. The command window should look like this:
Code:
Tracing path to neoloby06.ffxiv.com
Pinging pinging neolobby06.ffxiv.com 25 times.
Traces/Pings Complete
Press any key to continue . . .
Click anywhere in the command window and then press any key on your keyboard and it will then close the CMD prompt and then open the file for you in your default file editor so you can then view it.
It is set to use the append option for the output (>> instead of >), so each time you run it a new date/time stamp will be added at the end and then the new results. Here is the output for just one pass:
Code:
19:14:26.30 Thu 10/22/15
Tracing route to neolobby06.ffxiv.com [195.82.50.9]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms LPTSRV [10.10.100.1]
2 80 ms 335 ms 230 ms cpe-75-176-160-1.sc.res.rr.com [75.176.160.1]
3 65 ms 74 ms 37 ms cpe-024-031-198-005.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.5]
4 15 ms 11 ms 16 ms clmasoutheastmyr-rtr2.sc.rr.com [24.31.196.210]
5 26 ms 27 ms 27 ms be33.drhmncev01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.180]
6 32 ms 30 ms 32 ms bu-ether45.asbnva1611w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.44]
7 29 ms 31 ms 28 ms 0.ae0.pr0.dca10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.183]
8 30 ms 31 ms 31 ms ash-b2-link.telia.net [195.12.255.229]
9 29 ms 29 ms 31 ms ash-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.130.2]
10 161 ms 143 ms 175 ms ffm-bb2-link.telia.net [62.115.141.111]
11 196 ms 129 ms 128 ms ffm-b10-link.telia.net [62.115.137.187]
12 127 ms 128 ms 128 ms kddi-ic-301630-ffm-b10.c.telia.net [62.115.32.110]
13 128 ms 128 ms 128 ms 195.82.60.29
14 187 ms 207 ms 182 ms 195.82.61.14
15 126 ms 125 ms 130 ms 195.82.50.234
16 130 ms 131 ms 130 ms 195.82.50.9
Trace complete.
Pinging neolobby06.ffxiv.com [195.82.50.9] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=203ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=47
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=128ms TTL=47
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=128ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=207ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=47
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=47
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=48
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=127ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=223ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=199ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=50
Reply from 195.82.50.9: bytes=32 time=129ms TTL=48
Ping statistics for 195.82.50.9:
Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 25, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 126ms, Maximum = 223ms, Average = 141ms
This way you can have a sort of running log of your tests if you want. You can rename the file to archive it to keep it from running too long (I like to just stick a date in the name for organization)--or you can just delete it. It will generate a new FFXIV_TRACE.TXT the next time you run it.
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All that information is brilliant and I'll definitely be taking it on board and putting it to good use. I spoke to SE about it and they recommended changing my DNS settings (?) and that seems to have done the trick, but it's always handy to know the ping and...other stuff too XD so thank you very much! 
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