Mysterious latency in FFXIV

[#1]

Currently, the FFXIV data centre for EU users is located in Canada (Montreal, I think). I'm experiencing quite a bit of latency, 95-120ms, which makes certain life and death situations impossible to dodge. After doublechecking that it's not the router or wifi or equipment (PS3 and PC experience the same lag), I ran a traceroute to one of the servers (slightly edited for clarity):

traceroute to 199.91.189.145 (199.91.189.145), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  ...
 2  lo0.11.central11.pcl-bng02.plus.net (195.166.130.152)  12.672 ms  12.687 ms  12.685 ms
 3  irb.11.PCL-CR02.plus.net (84.93.249.98)  12.932 ms irb.11.PCL-CR01.plus.net (84.93.249.97)  17.681 ms irb.11.PCL-CR02.plus.net (84.93.249.98)  13.809 ms
 4  195.99.126.98 (195.99.126.98)  15.368 ms  17.279 ms 195.99.126.96 (195.99.126.96)  17.642 ms
 5  core3-te0-9-0-19.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.249.39)  18.129 ms core3-te0-12-0-19.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.249.31)  18.094 ms core3-te0-9-0-18.faraday.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.249.33)  18.779 ms
 6  peer5-te0-10-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (213.121.193.101)  19.474 ms peer5-te0-0-0-3.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (194.72.31.91)  13.004 ms peer5-te0-10-0-3.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (62.6.201.181)  13.015 ms
 7  166-49-211-246.eu.bt.net (166.49.211.246)  14.249 ms 166-49-211-250.eu.bt.net (166.49.211.250)  12.916 ms 166-49-211-246.eu.bt.net (166.49.211.246)  13.599 ms
 8  be3035.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.14.169)  13.172 ms  13.738 ms  14.307 ms
 9  be2350.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.39.185)  14.669 ms  16.735 ms  15.110 ms
10  be2391.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.39.150)  20.887 ms  21.228 ms  21.336 ms
11  be2384.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.44.137)  90.749 ms  92.569 ms  88.756 ms
12 ...

Latency is pretty small (<22 ms) until hop 11. Both hop 10 and 11 are somewhere in USA, based on GeoIP, and the lag spike happens within USA. Now, I know the route is firmly out of Plus.net and BT networks after hop 7, so there's probably nothing you can do about it.
But here the mystery sets in. If I run the same traceroute from a virtual server running in Bracknell or thereabout, there is a smaller spike in latency along the way, because the route is totally different:

traceroute to 199.91.189.145 (199.91.189.145), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  msh214.memset.net (77.73.0.119)  0.080 ms  0.051 ms  0.061 ms
 2  fw-ec-b1.memset.net (37.128.132.2)  0.241 ms  0.210 ms  0.185 ms
 3  rtr-rdg-3.memset.net (37.128.135.226)  0.396 ms  0.379 ms  0.380 ms
 4  185.28.167.96 (185.28.167.96)  0.492 ms  0.495 ms  0.524 ms
 5  185.28.167.171 (185.28.167.171)  0.517 ms  0.495 ms  0.471 ms
 6  xe-4-1-3.lon80.ip4.gtt.net (46.33.90.229)  1.011 ms  1.131 ms  1.115 ms
 7  xe-7-3-0.mtl10.ip4.gtt.net (141.136.106.106)  76.790 ms  76.773 ms  76.751 ms
 8  ormuco-gw.ip4.gtt.net (216.221.156.110)  77.316 ms  77.360 ms  77.334 ms

There hop 7 is in France and hop 8 in USA. (And the lag in this case comes from the UK-France link!) And if I ping the server IP from my PC at work (which is in a third place), sometimes I get latency of around 100ms, sometimes only 30ms.
So the question is, is there anything I can do as a regular customer to choose a particular route? Even 77ms would make a huge difference compared to 120ms. I suspect there isn't, but it's worth asking!

[#2]

This was the main reason I quit FFXIV a while back.
Can't get my head around why they call them an EU server cluster when they're located in Canada.
Japanese servers are in Japan so why can't EU servers be in Netherlands, that's where EU servers for most games usually are.

[#3]

I'm getting a similar problem. Gigantic lag spikes of ~1500ms and poor average performance too.

Tracing route to 199.91.189.145 over a maximum of 30 hops
  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms MY_WIRELESS_ROUTER [192.168.108.1]
  2    11 ms    10 ms    10 ms  lo0-central10.ptw-ag04.plus.net [195.166.128.194
]
  3     9 ms     9 ms     9 ms  link-a-central10.ptw-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.15
6]
  4     9 ms     9 ms     8 ms  xe-7-2-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.0.252]
  5    10 ms    10 ms    10 ms  195.99.126.138
  6    33 ms    13 ms    12 ms  194.72.31.152
  7    11 ms    15 ms    12 ms  peer5-te0-9-0-7.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159
.254.144]
  8    11 ms    10 ms    32 ms  166-49-211-248.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.248]
  9    12 ms    12 ms    12 ms  be3035.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.1
4.169]
 10    13 ms    13 ms    11 ms  be2350.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.39
.185]
 11    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  be2391.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.39
.150]
 12   100 ms   100 ms   118 ms  be2384.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.44
.137]
 13    88 ms    88 ms    88 ms  38.122.42.34
 14    91 ms    94 ms    92 ms  192.34.76.10
 15    92 ms    92 ms    92 ms  199.91.189.242
 16    93 ms    93 ms    92 ms  199.91.189.145

If anybody knows of a fix for this, I'd be glad to hear it.

[#4]

Hi vrkosk.
Sorry to hear you are having issue. Being an ex WoW player i can understand your frustration.
Ive checked your line and I cannot see any errors which would be the culprit of your issue. From looking online it looks like latency with FF14 is a known issue. Have you tried any port forwarding to see if this clears up the issue at all?

[#5]

I'm not sure how port forwarding would help here. Could you elaborate a bit?
Square Enix is rumoured to plan to install servers within Europe at some point this year, so I hope the problem will go away then. In the mean time, I've seen some positive words said about WTFast, so I'll try that this weekend and see if it improves things.

[#6]

Care to link any articles that are spreading these rumours?
With the release of Heavensward I could imagine proper EU servers being a "new" feature to come along but I highly doubt it.
It's SE after all. Gotta do it on the cheap.

[#7]

I don't have any links to give, sorry. They really are rumours in the old-fashioned sense: hearsay from in-game chat. The rumourers claim it's a separate thing from Heavensward and won't appear during the launch period. We'll just have to wait and see...

[#8]

Just to confirm - I'm still playing FFXIV and they ARE 100% doing EU servers. It's not a rumour, it's confirmed. In the recent live letter that was done they announced they have purchased the equipment and are just sorting it all out, it's likely this will be implemented with the next big patch, so in like 2-3 months.
Back to your issue - Latency of 100-150ms is very common for people in the EU that are connecting to US/Canadian servers. Whenever I played WoW on a US server my ping would be about 100ms so this isn't really abnormal and tbh, it's completely playable once you get used to the extra ping. It took me a few months when I originally started the game and I imagine it'll take me a little while to get used to the improved ping when the EU servers are sorted.