[¤[4thPHiL]¤ Machalnik]

I run a dedicated server (celeron 400mhz, 384MB Ram) on a 1MB SYMETRIC DSL line with pretty good pings for everybody (server max is 12 players tho). I've had no problems with the 400mhz (tho more ram never hurts!!) and I run Autokick and Teamspeak on the same machine. The key is that word SYMETRIC... your upload speed is very important!! Are you on an aDSL or sDSL connection? DSL connections ARE better for hosting than cable because the bandwidth is more consistent. But if you are on a 768/56kb aDSL the connection for hosting is still gonna be shit! If this sounds like your case, then the first thing to consider upping is your bandwidth!

If you have the up stream bandwidth, then you may consider asking your DSL provider to manually map a better routing for your connection to minimize hops to major backbone connections. A good DSL provider will do this for you, but some will just tell you too bad.

You might also have some hang ups with the routing in/out of your network. But in general your ping to the server will be lower inside your network than it is to the outside world. You gotta think, your internal network is probably either 10MB or 100MB! That's a lot more bandwidth than your DSL connection (and less hops too)!

hope that gave you some ideas...