Found this on another forum.
Q: I'm getting a lot of choke. How do I reduce it?
A: Choke occurs when your client can't maintain the necessary data rate to or from the server. This can occur if your connection can't handle the rate, if the rate is too low, or if cl_updaterate or cl_cmdrate is set too high. See the question on optimization for more information on how to tweak your rates.
Q: My server takes forever to change maps! What's going on?
A: There are a few possibilities here. First, your statsme log may have gotten too large, and it takes the statsme plugin a very long time to load it; I recommend you try shutting down your server, then deleting addons/statsme/statsme.log. Second, you may have other admin mod or metamod plugins that cause the mapchanges to be slow (the AMX plugin "csstats" is well-known to cause this, for instance); try disabling plugins to see if that will help. Third, your map files may have lost the hardlink to their source files on the server; you can ask us to run our repair script in this case.
Q: How can I optimize my client settings (cvars) so gameplay is as smooth as possible?
A: There are three main settings to look at on the client-side. These are rate, cl_updaterate, and cl_cmdrate.
rate determines the speed, in bytes per second, that your client allows itself and the server to interact at. This setting is needed because your client has no idea how fast your connection is, and it doesn't know how to find out. The rate setting tells it the maximum speed at which it can transfer data. If it is set too high, your connection may not be able to handle it, and you will get packetloss; if it is set too low, choke and latency will increase, possibly making your game stutter or lag. Half-life is generally able to compensate for choke fairly well, as long as there is not much of it; however, when choke gets too high (over 100), it has to start dropping packets (and we all know how bad packetloss is!). I recommend a rate of 8000 or 10000, SINCE MOST BROADBAND CAN HANDLE IT EASY (try 10000 first).
cl_updaterate determines how many updates per second the client will accept when it is interacting with the server. A higher value can make gameplay more smooth, although it often makes your ping appear higher due to the added latencies on both ends from extra calculations involved. I recommend a cl_updaterate of 40, which I have found balances ping and smoothness fairly well. Feel free to try higher and lower values. A value too high can cause choke if your machine or your connection can't handle all the packets; a high value can also make your ping look much higher than it should be. Some people blindly set this variable to 101 -- that would be an example of a too-high value.
cl_cmdrate determines how many commands your client sends to the server per second (such as moving, turning, jumping). I usually recommend that users set their cl_cmdrate cvar to the same value as cl_updaterate, because they are so similar. Too-high or too-low values (like 101) may lead to the infamous "shots not registering" problem and high values can also cause high in-game pings.
Q: A ping booster would make things better, right? That's like free performance! Can I add one on?
A: No. A "ping booster" such as Hullu's "WinHL-Booster" will change timers on the system and raise the server FPS, which can reduce your perceived ping, but at the same time it also causes much higher CPU usage. The higher CPU usage leads to lag spikes, long map changes, and other odd server behavior. It also affects all the servers on the machine. For these reasons, we cannot let you run one.
We do offer an option similar to a "ping booster" that we call a Ping Accelerator. If you order a server with this option, we will put you on a special machine that is designed with that use in mind and which we watch very carefully. The Ping Accelerator can reduce everyone's pings in the server by about 10 over a non-accelerated server.
Its all on this website
http://rentals.nuclearfallout.net/rent. ... =faq-lag#2
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