Rates, how to get a better gaming experience.

Swedish Inferno is running at tickrate 100 using up to 3 times the bandwith of normal servers. This together with a maximum of 33 players makes the server quite bandwith consuming. You must configure your game to take advantage of the servers high tickrate. Failure to do so might cause your game to lag or choke.

There are three main variables to configure: cl_updaterate, cl_cmdrate and rate. These variables can be set via the console or config file, search the web using google if you dont know how to access the console or config.

cl_updaterate controls the number of packets per second you are requesting from the server. cl_updaterate should be set to 100 to take full advantage of the servers tickrate.

cl_cmdrate controls max number of packets sent to server per second. cl_cmdrate should be set to 100 to take full advantage of the servers tickrate. It seems the game does not send more packets then the fps of the game so a high fps is preferable and fps_max should be set to 100 or above. I guess you could say that the fps is your games tickrate.

rate controls max bytes/sec the host can receive data. rate should be quite high around 60000 should be enough when cl_updaterate and cl_cmdrate is set to 100. rate used to be limited to 30000 but this has now been fixed by valve. A to small rate and you will get choke.

So start by bringing up the console and type net_graph 3. With this you will be able to check your client connection speed and quality. The first line shows your current rendered frames per second and your average latency. The second line shows the size in bytes of the last incoming packet, the average incoming bandwidth (rate), and received packets per second (cl_updaterate). The third line shows the same data just for outgoing packets (cl_cmdrate). The fourth line shows packet loss and choke.

These are the ideal values when playing on Swedish Inferno (or any other server) if your internet connection can handle it so type them into your console:
fps_max 300
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 100
rate 60000

Then play on the server and check for lag, choke and loss. If you dont have any lag/choke/loss then you are done. Choke 0-5 is acceptable. If you get lag or massive choke or loss then you need to do something about it.

Note that lag can be caused by many things: tasks running in the background, your (wireless) network not working 100%, your brother downloading movies on the same connection etc. If you only get lag/choke/loss on Swedish Inferno and not on other CSS-servers with same amount of players then most likely your internet connection cant handle the rates you typed in above. You might then have to lower your cl_updaterate, cl_cmdrate and rate. Try 66/66/30000 or even 33/33/18000.

These are the possible values for cl_updaterate, cl_cmdrate and rate on Swedish Inferno, you might have to play around with them to find what suits you best:
cl_updaterate 33-120
cl_cmdrate 33-100
rate 18000-

/demios