Thanks for replys all... especially you EnigmaMaitreya, thanks!
Yes, it's only been happening the last month and a half. Before that i had no lag. I've asked the cable provider if something has changed and they did not say it has, but it sure seems wierd. I'll try that traceroute program. I also tried a trace ping speed test with my cable provider while on the phone, using dos screen and typing; tracer
www.google.com .... and the resluts did suggest that I'm losing connection from somewhere, but the cable guys are doing nothing about it. if i can get more evidenc e i will confront them again.
thanks.
Them not doing something about it is the easy road for them. They may tell you a FORM of the truth and say it is not their equipment etc. BUT what they would NOT be saying is they partner with companies/institutions to form these routes. Such that they ultimately have the ability to reform a partnership that would remove the "Bottle Neck".
The Tier 1 people can not and probably have no clue what the heck I just said. They are after all just reading from a script designed to solve the problem (a generic statement) and as such there is very little point in taking it out on them as they probably would get fired for deviating from the script.
Now having said the above, you certainly can ask to talk to a tier 2 (ultimately tier 3) person or a Manager (and may still need to try to escalate it through the various tiers of the Network Technical Support Group).
Having a tracert in hand that clearly shows the problem is an invaluable piece of evidence. Even if the person is not in your area the level 2 person should be able to log into the "Redback" you are connecting to and run the tracert and verify the problem. If this is accomplished and they see the bottle neck you have gone the limit. They will either repair/partner with some one or they are prepared to accept you moving to some other form of internet connection.
Now to make sure that some areas of responsibilities are clear, EA/UO have no authority over or any responsibility for the inbound routing, in short they cant do squat about it (not literally their technical dept could talk to your technical group on your behalf but more likely than not it would just be a waste of everyone's time).
Now if the problem were on the return leg, then Heck yea, EA/UO are responsible for that part and can indeed work tom solve the problem, if they wanted to that is.
Understand this, all of the above is assuming that nothing has changed about your hardware or operating system, other than the periodic patch's by Microsoft. If you have installed new software or hardware, and it was on or around the time you started noticing this, then there is a possibility (albeit slim to none) that the change is the culprit and not the network. Again the tracert will clearly show this one way or the other.
As an example only as I could NOT find the file that contains the uo server id's, if they even provide that any longer. I edited out the first five hops as they can not be relevant.
Notice hop 11 is a no response, this is ok as often routers chose to not respond to a tracert.
Notice the jump between 7 and 8, in this case that is no bid deal, but had it been for example, 6663ms and the next one had been for sake of argument 6673 followed by a 6683 etc, then that says that hop 7 to 8 is a problem, if one is looking for a lack of responsiveness in the connection. That is the kind of thing you would be looking for, it probably is not as exaggerated as my example, but it would be a noticeable sore thumb, it should stick out quite clearly. You may want to run the route several times at differing times of the day, and copying and pasting them into a document or how ever you want to organize your case. If your not familure with the Dos Box, then you can left click on the icon in the top left corner. Look for the Edit option and then do the mark option. This part can be tricky as it is not intuitively obvious how to do this part. Put the cursor in the dos box at the beginning of the area you want to copy, now use the cursor (left key down) as you would to draw/outline a rectangle. This will highlite an area to be copied. When you have the are highlighted hit the Enter key (the not so obvious part

), the area will be copied to the clip board and can be pasted as text.
I hope all of this helps in resolving your issue.
Code:
Tracing route to compassion.owo.com [159.153.197.91]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 69.220.8.51
7 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms gar3.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.79.85]
8 63 ms 64 ms 63 ms cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.133.222]
9 64 ms 63 ms 63 ms cr1.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.4.121]
10 63 ms 62 ms 62 ms 12.122.137.69
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 62 ms 62 ms 62 ms 159.153.192.230
13 64 ms 63 ms 63 ms compassion.owo.com [159.153.197.91]
Trace complete.