INTRO
I have played with this same rig for about a year or so with no issues, but for almost 5 months now, I have freakish lag that makes the game unplayable 95% of the time - it really has me stumped and I don't know if anyone else has experienced or tried this (hold out for the freaky section).

SPECS
Phenom 9850 quad core, 3GB RAM, onboard graphics "disabled", using Zotac (GeForce) 9500 GT, Windows XP SP3. I had 3 separate wireless USB adapters (linksys, belkin, netgear), and now I am using a linksys wireless-N PCI card (to be rid of any potential USB conflict), and I have tried 3 different brands of routers. This problem has spanned across all makes and models of wireless adapters/routers, and 2 reformat and rebuilds of this system.

ABOUT THE LAG
The lag shows up during DDO. I can hit the web, stream music and video, play other MMOs and not experience this issue. During DDO, sometimes I can play fine for hours. But most of the time, I login, and after 3 seconds to 10 minutes, the latency will spike to 4,000ms and then just go up until it hits some ungodly number - then it might come back or it might disconnect me. Rebooting the computer doesn't change the behavior...once it has decided to be laggy, I am done for the night.

This lag is visible in ping traces... I can watch a trace to some other server start lagging out while DDO is running. If I close DDO, the pings to whatever server I am testing will return to normal.

ABOUT THE FREAKINESS
The above behavior lead me to another freaky idea. I changed my DDO client to windowed mode. I fired up a ping trace in a command window. I found some open place to run around in and begin my diabolical test. As I started to lag out, I would watch the ping trace start timing out.... then I would hit the ALT-TAB key and put focus on the command window. The time-outs stopped. ALT-TAB back to DDO client and wait for things to lag again, ping trace would time out again, ALT-TAB back to command window... ping trace stops timing out. I have screen-shots of this behavior. But...it gets FREAKIER!!

So, I ALT_TAB to DDO, and press the "R" key to start running. When my DDO Client starts lagging out, I pressed ALT-TAB to go to command window... the lag is gone, and my toon starts running forward. I have confirmed this behavior for over a month... I can actually run all over the map as long as DDO doesn't have focus! I just ALT-TAB in long enough to enter a course correction, and ALT-TAB away to keep the lag from taking over. Riddle me THAT ONE, Bat man?!!!11!!one!!eleventy-one!1!!

1-800-WHAT-NOW
This makes the game unplayable to me. So I have stopped paying to play. But if anyone has experienced this, tried it while they were lagging to confirm it, or has any suggestions about what it could be (some kind of video conflict? some low-level networking bug in DDO?), I would be very appreciative.

Thanks,