This is absolutely an issue occuring recently for only eastern verizon customers. Below is one single example of an issue that's been happening for a week or so. The following example has all firewalls and virus scan disabled and I had a friend (on comcast) connected to the same server perfectly.
Here is a thread full of other people with the same issue:
Please fix this, I have no problem switching to comcast if this issue persists.
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 208.78.166.89
Tracing route to a208-78-166-89.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [208.78.166
.89]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 18 ms 17 ms 18 ms L100.BSTNMA-VFTTP-111.verizon-gni.net {edited for privacy}
3 21 ms 19 ms 19 ms G0-15-2-0.BSTNMA-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net [100.41.
196.150]
4 19 ms 39 ms 19 ms ae10-0.BOS-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.163.1
72]
5 33 ms * * 0.ae11.XL4.NYC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.20.117]
6 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms 0.xe-9-0-0.BR1.NYC1.ALTER.NET [152.63.19.213]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 171 ms 172 ms 169 ms vlan51.ebr1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.138.222]
9 169 ms 169 ms 172 ms ae-37-37.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.8
9]
10 158 ms 161 ms 159 ms ae-72-72.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.1
50]
11 173 ms 171 ms 174 ms ae-2-70.edge2.Washington4.Level3.net [4.69.149.8
0]
12 121 ms 121 ms 123 ms 4.53.114.114