>>As I said in my first message, I tried through 2 different ISP's with the same results - the tracert I included showed nothing unusual up to your IP address in either case. Pathping showed consistent results with zero data loss and similar response times for the route. At the time I posted, the delays were very consistent, later the delay had completely disappeared. The problem is very intermittent - when it occurs again I will try and provide better info. If the delay had not been so precise, I might not have ever mentioned it. This was not rush hour, it was 6AM with 35 users online and very little traffic - 8 messages within an hour possibly. I am not trying to point fingers here, but a consistent 12 second delay in response time seems very unusual to me - considering the very dynamic nature of Internet routing.
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>Yes, of course, I agree that this latency is completely unnacceptable. I'll try a reverse trace to your IP which will give us the proper location of the latency.

I'm a DHCP client, so I'll try to let you know when I see the problem again. Thanks.