I dunno if anyone else has ever looked at this site, but www.internettrafficreport.com shows that Asia (as a region) has been experiencing *horrid* packet loss and latency (upwards of 40%, and 500ms) lately.
Which leads me to believe that someone over there is doing Bad Things to the internet in that neck of the web.
Dunno if it's related to FFXI crappiness, but it might be a contributing factor, for sure.
-Jarden