In the past, the server i had running was a laptop on it's last leg. amd 2600, 1GB ram, win XP running a lof of extra crap.
Recently, i got my hands on a dell optiplex 260. p4 at 2.5ish ghz, 2gb ram(its super quiet).
If yas want, in the next few weeks I cna set it up with either a linix distro or XP as a dedicated promod/practice server.
Most of the lag you have seen was caused by the laptop being crappy. This computer should be more than enough to host some private games.
My cable connection is 15 down and 1 up, but i should be able to allocate priority bandwidth to it.
Should i go ahead and do this? I'll be free soon as i finish testing some phpbb3 portals in the next week.