Just about everyone with more than 600 kbits upload should, in theory, be able to host 12 players. Edal's 3 + mbits of upload is T1-line range, it would be able to host up to 50 on a shooter.
But a couple of those 12-player matches the other day did involve some disconnects... remember the strike round in Sicily, where poor Mirgervin ended up on the losing end of a 6 vs 3 battle when the French players were disconnected... right after that was a team battle at Dover, the dots on the map were pretty jumpy and the sides ended up uneven again.
I think geography plays as much if not more of a role than upload bandwidth (download bandwidth pretty much means nothing). Earlier today I was in a 4-player game hosted in the UK, Macademic who is in Moscow lost connection within a couple minutes. Moscow is clear around the world from the western US. I think the more players there are scattered around the world, the less the network is able to handle them.
I'm betting the best 12-player results will be when the host is near the geographic center of the players.
I have also noticed that the French tend to get disconnected from transatlantic matches, quite a bit.
Part of the reason may be that Europe has invested more in their high-bandwidth hardware than the US or Russia.
My upload is 896 kbits max, it usually cruises around 700.
Last edited by kozzm0; 12-10-2009 at 02:35 AM.
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