I just completed a patch that allows you to play with any monster amount online. It trades off bandwidth by not updating actors farther away, and tries to be smart about it. One thing I need is everyone's bandwidth. I'm trying to find a list of settings that can be used whereby I can determine the threshold of what to send.
In massive monster maps like Chillax, ZDoomWars... well, you could probably name massive monster wads, with enough of them you hit the '1024 packet loss' error. I tested with Watakid today Chillax map39 with what felt like one million active monsters, and none of us timed out. While this is great, there are some corners cut that I'd like to not cut, but I need community input for one thing, and that is your bandwidth.
Right now we have 2 connection type options: 56k, and DSL. This isn't too much to work with. Ideally I'd like it if people could give us intervals of numbers on what their bandwidth is (like 56k, 128k, 256k, 512k, 1 meg, 2 megs, infinite...etc), so that people higher UL/DL rates can get more frequent updates, and thus make it look smoother. I have no idea where my bounds are with people, and getting everyone's input would be really nice.
If you don't know your speed, then go here: http://www.speedtest.net/
Here's mine for my own reference:
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3962817395
As a final note, if your net use fluctuates dramatically, your data point will not be too useful for me -- though maybe your lower bound is.
EDIT:
Don't know how true this is, but if you the reader have an alternative source that works better, let me know (or screenshot)<Propaganda> I heard speedtest.net plays into the hands of ISP's and skews the results in their favour