According to this unrealadmin wiki:
(found in:
http://wiki.unrealadmin.org/Netspeed_Tutorial_(UT) )
"What effect does it have in UT? Many ppl have seriously interesting views on this that easily can be put in parallel with the quotes from certain presidents in USA.
First of all. Higher tickrate does not improve ping. Very common misconception. What it actually does, is to reduce the time between each time the server handles incoming data, and sends out new data. So let me explain it in more complex terms.
By first explaining what tickrate actually is, I hope to have made you so confused you will believe the rest of the things I write in this document.
Tickrate is actually 'very very complex! It is the "Frames Per Second" the server is running at. Yes, it is so complex. A tickrate of 20 means that the server is doing 20 frames of action per second. To make it even more complex, lets just say, that it processes data 20 times a second. (Player movement, player firing, player deaths, player *****ing, player lagging, and the other more unimportant things 20 times a second). So. 1 Tick = 1 Frame. The server tickrate is the "framerate" at which the server is running on.
Ok, now that you are confused by the tickrate term, lets see how far it is between each tick update. since it says pr second, we will use 1 second, which is 1000 milliseconds. it's Per. so we gotta divide somewhere, let's try the following. 1000ms/20 = 50ms. OK! it might seem like there is 50 milliseconds between each tick. Let's try it the other way. 50ms * 20 = 1000ms. Oh yes, we reversed the equation and got what we started with. That means. A tickrate of 20, gives 50ms between each update on server."
I also found this funny, even though it explains more about the tickrate, compared to netspeed:
"Netspeed
What is netspeed good for? What does it do? Is Bin Laden dead? Unfortunately, I can only answer the 2 first questions. Well, seriously, the 2 first questions is actually 1 question... Err, anyway.
The netspeed decides how much data you want to send to the server each second. A netspeed of 5000 will try to send 5000 bytes of data each second. And yes, for the smart ones out there that already guessed it, netspeed of 13690 will send 13690 bytes pr second. Also, it tells the server how much data you want to receive each second. The servers seem to not allow going under 2000, clients have a minimum of 500.
Some interesting aspect with the netspeed, is that it limits your framerate. Your maximum expected framerate online with netspeed 5000 is 5000/64 = 78fps. You should not get more, you will often get less. So why /64 you ask? Well, it's kinda simple. Each time your computer does an update, it sends about 64 bytes of data. So the great doods at epic thought, let's do netspeed/64 and limit framerate that way, so the client does not exceed netspeed bytes sent pr second.
For those of you thinking:
OMG, I gotta set netspeed to 20000 immediately
let me just inform you that your hardware probably can't hold an even 20000/64 = 312fps average during an entire match anyway. Another bottleneck here, is your internet connection. If you got a state-of-the-art 9600 modem, it can only send and receive 9600/8 = 1200 bytes/second anyway, and what happens if you exceed that limit, is that data must wait before it can be transmitted to/from you. This causes the wellknown "ping spike". So use netspeed to make sure your connection does not get overloaded and "spiked". If the spikes last too long, you might even get packetloss, since the packets get pissed off waiting in queues and kill themselves.
I found a nice trick myself. I put my netspeed to refreshrate*64 (and then + some for a nicer rounder number). I got 85hz refresh, *64 = 5440, so I set netspeed to 5500. This gives a nice flickerfree experience when I play online. To be bloody honest, I had been experimenting with netspeeds for a while until I found 5500 to be most pleasant. I didn't know about this *64 thing at the time. Weird coincidence or facts, you try yourself.
Now I've said all about netspeed and effects on client to server. Let's take it the other way. What happens if the server wants to tell me too much. It can only tell me 5500 bytes pr second. The solution is quite simple. The server stops telling you stuff it feels is nonimportant. This has been carefully hac... errr balanced by the brainmonsters at Epic to give a great online gaming experience. Most important stuff like other players & bots have priority to be sent first. Then comes less important things, like projectiles & effects. So if the server has too much to tell you, it will put it off until it sees you have enough bandwidth to receive it. Thus, you get the infamous "rockets out of thin air"-syndrome. If it has to wait sending stuff too long, you might not ever receive it. The result of this is you going dead from invisible stuff, this is often referred to as "WTF??!" by the players affected."
