Rates, if you don't know.

[Shadowex3]

Choke = server can't keep up or you're set to not recieve as many packets as you need.

 

This guide's seriously overcomplicated and in a few places inaccurate. You want fps_max, a clientside command, to be as high as possible because there's simply no reason to ever have it lower and CSS ties your graphical updates to your network shit. That's why setting fps_max to 30 caps your rates too.

 

If you look at the actual bandwidth requirements with net_graph 3 on you can see pretty readily that anyone and everyone with at least a 1megabit connection should just set everything to the game's max and let the servers automatically cap them. There's just no reason to have anything lower with modern internet connections, I've got a pretty crappy quality 3mbit connection and I can easily max everything out and have no choke and no loss on a 100tic server.

 

There's a LOT of myths about source networking, this guide looks like it was designed based around those instead of the real facts. For anyone curious as to how this stuff REALLY works here's valve's official documentation and the only other trustworthy one which just did all the math for you (whisper's):

 

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking

http://whisper.ausgamers.com/wiki/index.php/Source_rates

http://whisper.ausgamers.com/wiki/index.php/Tickrate