I have a mate who wants to play online but needs to organize internet a home - Any idea what the minimum speed would be to play online (assuming he played in low ping games)?

just to play in aussie servers 256kb but if he wants to play on overseas servers atleast 1500kb...

other countries i dont know about..... good luck to your mate

56k dial up modem will enable you to play online easily in Australia and overseas for up to 10 palyers on a server.

If you want to race on larger occupied servers then you need faster internet such as adsl. The Most important thing is ping (but anything around 400ms and lower is acceptable) after that the download speed just limits you to how large a populated server you can join before you start to experience lag problems.

It is advisable to go through a quality ISP to get the best performance. Spend some time and do research on ISP's available in your area don't just go for the cheapestr deal.

56k dial-up is enough for normal demo server.
but i would suggest 1500kbps ADSL.

Thanks a million for the answers guys I'll point him to the thread to read and hopefully he will be online soon.