ping on LAN question concerning a game please help

[PenCapChew7]

I recently set up a network with my friend. My computer is a 1 gig AMD athalon CPU, ASUS A7v133 Socket A mobo w/128 megs of ram and Windows 98 SE. My friend's is a Emachines Pentium 3 550megahertz w/ 128 megs of RAM and also has Windows 98 SE. We both have the same network cards, a linksys LNE 100TX Fast ethernet adapter(LNE 100TX v4). I have a hub, I believe it's the normal kind...it has 5 connections for cables so up to five people can get on it. We both see each other in Network Neighborhood. When I set up a server for Unreal Tournament, he tells me before he connects that I have a ping that usually fluctates between 10-15. I thought LAN games have 0 ping, and that's why people loved them so much for them having zero latency. Perhaps the fast part of the linksys card is misleading. My questions are: Does anyone on this forum know what the average ping is supposed to be for this game? Is 10-15(sometimes 20-15) ping times bad, meaning do I have a bad NIC's or network? I just want to optimize the LAN so my friend and I have good performance on the network. I tried setting the role of my computer in the performance tab from desktop to network server. Was that a good thing to do? I even tried adjusting the maxclientrate in the INI file of the game(the default is 20000) so I lowered to 18000...don't know if this was a dumb move I picked up bits and pieces of computer savviness from some friends, no means an expert, however I love to learn whenever possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Xayd]

10-20 ping on a lan is normal, yes.

Maxclientrate online is generally 8000 (it's measured in bytes). The game typically won't use more than 15000, even on a lan, but it won't matter much if you adjust it.

[PenCapChew7]

Thank you for your advice.