one of the things that I often forget to do is to run some benchmarks when things are going well or when I move to a new location so I can have an idea of how bad things are when they aren't going right.
do a ping to the server and a tracert at your command line and see where the hops largest.
MPFourOne:~ yaccster$ traceroute 162.248.95.178 traceroute to 162.248.95.178 (162.248.95.178), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 170.260.721.0 1.554 ms 1.364 ms 1.259 ms
2 lo0-100.washdc-vfttp-317.verizon-gni.net (11.13.1.1) 4.824 ms 1.114 ms 2.638 ms
3 b3317.washdc-lcr-21.verizon-gni.net (130.81.218.188) 2.601 ms
b3317.washdc-lcr-22.verizon-gni.net (130.81.218.190) 3.711 ms
b3317.washdc-lcr-21.verizon-gni.net (130.81.218.188) 6.384 ms
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 bundle-ether8.gw5.nyc4.alter.net (140.222.233.187) 12.443 ms
bundle-ether6.gw5.nyc4.alter.net (140.222.233.185) 10.149 ms 14.077 ms
7 internap-gw.customer.alter.net (65.217.199.202) 10.530 ms 10.210 ms 9.180 ms
8 border1-po2-bbnet2.nyj004.pnap.net (216.52.95.109) 9.217 ms
border2-po2-bbnet2.nyj004.pnap.net (216.52.95.110) 8.885 ms 10.240 ms
9 inap-b2e4.e9.router.nyc.nfoservers.com (162.248.95.253) 7.858 ms
inap-b2e2.e6.router.nyc.nfoservers.com (70.42.74.253) 10.097 ms
inap-b1e1.e5.router.nyc.nfoservers.com (63.251.20.253) 9.008 ms
10 c-162-248-95-178.managed-ded.inap-nyc.nfoservers.com (162.248.95.178) 7.735 ms 8.969 ms 9.162 ms