Perfectly Tuning Network Settings for your Computer&Network

Luckily we have the best tool in the world to perfectly tune our network settings, the network graph! To enable the network graph enter "net_graph 4" into the console. I will be referring to the network graph a lot and numbered areas in the network graph. To know what numbered area I'm talking about please visit this page:This is the most important network setting to tweak. TF2 looks at 2 numbers and chooses whichever value is higher. The first number is the value of cl_interp. The second number is cl_interp_ratio divided by cl_updaterate. This leaves you 2 options to tweak the duration of your interpolation buffer.A. Set cl_interp to 0 and raise cl_interp_ratio above 1 [for example 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 2.2, etc]B. Set cl_interp_ratio to 1 raise cl_interp [for exmaple 18, 19, 20, 30, etc]If you choose option A the duration of your interpolation buffer can be seen in area 6 of the network graph as "lerp:"At the very bottom of your network graph (area 9) there is a blue area with orange bars. Every time these bars raise over the white line you lose hitreg because you are extrapolating instead of interpolating and your opponent does not line up with the server. Keep increase the duration of your interpolation buffer using option A or B until the orange bars never go above the white bar. Don't fine tune it too much. It's best that it has some room to work. Keep in mind you are only adding a few milliseconds of lag which is negligable compared to the benefits of interpolation.Almost all the internet across the globe is fast enough to handle an updaterate of 66.Almost all the internet across the glove is fast enough to hand a command rate of 66. This also affects your mic quality. So if you're gonna use your mic or especially spam music please use a command rate of 66.smoothing negativetly affects hit reg.Rate is probably one of the most simple settings, but also more important than you might think. It is a bandwidth limit in byte/s. If you enter "rate 100000" into the console your bandwith will be limited to ~100kbyte/s. The best setting for rate is 80% of your bandwidth. If your internet connection is 10mbit/s or faster (NOT BYTE) then you should set your rate to 8mbit/s (NOT BYTE). 8mbit/s is 1mbyte/s (back to bytes now) which is 1048576byte/s. 1048576byte/s is the maximum bandwidth limit allowed in tf2. To put this simple, if you download steam games faster than 1.25mbyte/s then enter "rate 1048576" into the console because it is the best setting for you. If your internet is not this fast then multiply your bandwidth by 80% and convert it to byte/s. Use this value for your rate. I'm not going to explain your ISP's networking, but setting your rate above your bandwidth will cause you to lose multiple packets instead of just one.This information is not important. I included it for anybody curious or wanting to learn more. To figure out our maximum update size we will calculate rate divided by cl_updaterate. Let's assume we are using rate 66000 and cl_updaterate 66. The calculation would calculate 1000. Area 2 of the network graph shows you the size of the updates you are downloading in bytes. If I recieve an update larger than 1000 bytes than I have exceeded my bandwidth limit. cl_updaterate is confusing because nothing is actually done in "times per second." everything is done in milliseconds. Setting your cl_updaterate to 66 let's the server know to wait 15.1515... milliseconds to send you your next update. Servers actually update every 15ms so their true updaterate is 66.666... I have no idea why value choose to use "times per second." If I recieve an update that was 1001bytes it would wait ~15.1516ms before sending me the next update. Essentially a microsecond later. A larger update like 1200bytes would come about 3ms later.