>>>For that last month or so, the speed of this system has become hideously slow at random times. Opening a message, previewing a message or posting message sometimes takes many minutes, and even then the action may not complete properly. While waiting for the click action to complete, you can't do anything else for fear of canceling the currently executing action. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when the system reacts fast or when it turns into molasses.
>>>
>>>Consequently, the system has now become almost unusable.
>>
>>Hmm, my experience has been the exact opposite. Most of the time, opening messages is now so fast, by the time I move my eyes away from the top-panel link I clicked on, the message has already appeared in the bottom pane. In the past month, I can't recall any message-opening that took more than 3 or 4 seconds.
>>
>>Saving new messages, and searches take a little longer, but are still at least as fast as ever.
>>
>>My whole Internet experience has improved a lot over the last couple of months:
>>
>>- My service used to be nominally 5Mbit (Shaw cable). However, I was still using an old Terayon cable modem. Unknown to me, the old modem was not compliant with the latest DOCSIS standard being used with the higher-speed service, so my traffic was being shunted to an old "legacy" system. I tolerated the speed for a long time, but once I started testing (speedtest.net), I found I was getting 2Mbit max, more like 1 - 1.2 on average.
>>
>>- I complained to Shaw, they said to come in and trade in my old Terayon for a new Motorola (free trade-in). Plugged the new one in, instant 4.7 - 4.9Mbit speed, less than half the latency of the old service.
>>
>>- Now Shaw has upgraded my service to 7.5Mbit for no extra charge
>>
>>So, make sure your broadband modem is up-to-date (especially if it's cable).
>>
>>You could also investigate if your ISP does any traffic shaping or throttling. There are sites like http://www.broadbandreports.com/ with active forums where you could ask.
>>
>>If other people are seeing slowdowns, maybe each one could:
>>
>>- list their ISP
>>- list a traceroute to UT i.e.
>>

>>* In CMD window:
>>tracert levelextreme.com >C:\UT_TraceRoute.txt
>>* Then copy/paste the contents of C:\UT_TraceRoute.txt here
>>

>
>

>
>
>Tracing route to levelextreme.com [205.205.57.4]
>over a maximum of 30 hops:
>
>
>  1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1 
>  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
>  3     9 ms    16 ms     8 ms  te-7-1-ur02.mchenry.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.86.117.125] 
>  4    11 ms    19 ms    15 ms  po-20-ur01.nchicago.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.87.230.34] 
>  5    15 ms    20 ms    11 ms  po-10-ur02.nchicago.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.87.230.38] 
>  6    13 ms    11 ms    26 ms  po-20-ur03.nchicago.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.87.231.81] 
>  7    16 ms    12 ms    10 ms  po-10-ur04.nchicago.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.87.231.86] 
>  8    12 ms    14 ms    20 ms  be-60-ar01.area4.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.87.230.41] 
>  9    38 ms    46 ms    34 ms  pos-0-7-0-0-cr01.chicago.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.49] 
> 10    41 ms    38 ms    36 ms  xe-10-3-0.edge1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.71.248.9] 
> 11    39 ms    39 ms    47 ms  vlan51.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.138.158] 
> 12    42 ms    55 ms    52 ms  ae-6.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.140.189] 
> 13    53 ms    35 ms    42 ms  ae-1-51.edge3.Chicago3.Level3.net [4.68.101.20] 
> 14    36 ms    46 ms    36 ms  MCI-Level3.Chicago3.Level3.net [4.68.110.186] 
> 15    40 ms    33 ms    40 ms  0.so-5-1-0.XL3.CHI13.ALTER.NET [152.63.65.34] 
> 16    59 ms    52 ms    47 ms  0.so-7-1-0.XT1.MTL1.ALTER.NET [152.63.2.90] 
> 17    58 ms    54 ms    55 ms  0.so-3-0-0.XR1.MTL1.ALTER.NET [152.63.133.46] 
> 18    61 ms    54 ms    54 ms  193.ATM6-0.GW1.MTL2.ALTER.NET [152.63.130.57] 
> 19    51 ms    52 ms    55 ms  transfo4-gw.customer.alter.net [216.95.146.106] 
> 20    50 ms    55 ms    51 ms  205.205.57.4 
>
>
>Trace complete.
>

>
>The tracert took close to a minute to execute. That must be the timeout at the beginning of the log file.

Tracert usually takes a little while to run, at least a second or so per hop. Here's mine, run just now:

Tracing route to levelextreme.com [205.205.57.4]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  2    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  rd1wh-ge3-0-0-7.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.159.35] 
  3    11 ms    13 ms    13 ms  rc2wh-tge0-7-0-0.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.165] 
  4    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  rc4wt-pos15-0-0.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.210] 
  5    14 ms    13 ms    13 ms  GigabitEthernet1-1.GW11.SEA1.ALTER.NET [63.65.78.29] 
  6    15 ms    15 ms    14 ms  0.so-7-2-0.XT1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.107.18] 
  7    89 ms    90 ms    89 ms  0.so-7-1-0.XT1.MTL1.ALTER.NET [152.63.2.90] 
  8    90 ms    89 ms    93 ms  0.so-3-0-0.XR1.MTL1.ALTER.NET [152.63.133.46] 
  9    86 ms    85 ms    86 ms  193.ATM7-0.GW1.MTL2.ALTER.NET [152.63.130.65] 
 10    89 ms    88 ms    88 ms  transfo4-gw.customer.alter.net [216.95.146.106] 
 11    87 ms    87 ms    85 ms  205.205.57.4 

Trace complete.

My trace has a low number of total hops - I suspect yours is more average. My latencies are low until my traffic hits Alter.Net's Seattle to Montreal link, then they're merely average. Your end-to-end latencies look very good, considerably lower than average.

OTOH, Comcast engages extensively in traffic shaping: http://www.google.ca/search?q=comcast+traffic+shaping