How to calcul rates for your server

This is a very important point to know about servers.
Since years, many people and websites try to give the best answer to understand how it works to obtain good rates.

In my opinion (and because i tried lot of things too ), follow advices from Drek :

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10970414#post10970414
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98416
http://www.reece-eu.net/drekrates.php

Take time to read and understand how it works.

I can say something all websites forgot to say :

If you have bots on your server : you don't have to add them in your calcul. For example if you have a server for 20 players with 5 bots always connected : do the calcul for only 15 players. Bots only use your processor!

So to resume, i do this calcul for my rates (i own home server and i play on the same computer):

sv_maxrate = Bandwidth in kbps X .95 (keep 5% of your bandwith) X 125 / Server Side (choose number of players you want)
Take care about one thing : if sv_maxrate is under 4000 decrease number of players for your server and do the calcul again (4000 seems to be the minimum rate to avoid any problems)

sv_maxupdaterate = sv_maxrate / 300

sv_minrate always fixed to 0 sv_minupdaterate always fixed to 4 (Drek's advice)

Do your own experience and have fun