The Phantasy Star Online 2 step lag 2 step lag...

When in SL, usually after spending several blissful hours exploring, playing, and attempting not to crash the simulators while learning LSL I will have to logout and restart the client to fix a problem only seen with bad dial-up connections and Phantasy Star Online called the PSO 2 Step Lag.

It's something like:
Step, step, lag, step, step, lag, step, step, lag.
or
Turn, lag, turn, lag, turn, lag.

I've turned off my firewall, disabled Microsoft's pitiful excuse of a firewall and security center, turned off Norton, disabled all un-needed background processes, even updated video, sound, tablet, lan, firewire, and monitor drivers. I assume there's a trojan (if you can call Windows one big trojan ^^) of some sort or a new virus on my system, yet nothing will show up any unknown process or evidence of a polymorphic virus.

I would blame Adelphia on this one, yet while testing upload and download performance I don't get the same cycle.

Any ideas? (And no, I'm not using dialup, though Adelphia is often as bad.)

Find a bandwidth tester, make sure you're running at your advertised bandwidth. If you use XP, close all applications that use the 'net, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, and hit the Networking thing to see what you're using as far as bandwidth goes.

If your looking for a good accurate internet speed test. I would recommend dslreports.com , their test can be found in the tool section of their web site. Their test is on many different server all over the world. Not only dose it test down load speed, , but it also test uploading. An important and often over looked on other test. They also offer many other tools to help diagnose your line, and tweaking it for better performance.