Well...from what I remember...
The players don't "Skip" around when you have a high ping, as I have played on 56k before. You just have to lead shots ahead of them, they still move smooth. The only time you'll see skipping players is PacketLoss. UT, I believe, uses UDP. In TCP, it will keep trying to send packets that are lost, which causes big lag pauses. But in UDP, it's not so much as a stickler, and will not resend those packets, which causes the skips. At least that's what I understand.
But anyways, that's for packetloss.
For ping, Justin the "scaling" of packets is done via "net speed xxxx" I believe...you can set it to anything you want. But if, for example, you are on 56k and you set it too high, you are going to be flooded with information and your modem can't keep up. I think. (these are all "I think's")
One thing I think I remember hearing a while ago is that UT sends the vectors of the player movements. Now, one way that high pingers can get screwed over is from dodging. If you have a really high ping, and someone dodges around a corner, this can lead to deaths where you don't even see the person before they kill you. That might be total BS, but that's what I'm remembering.
Also, the lower pingers have an advantage because they don't have to A) Lead so much or B) Lead at all. Even playing on 56k for multiple years, in the heat of a situation you can forget to lead your shots on occaison.
Um wow. I just re-read the message...You are saying the HIGHER pinger has the advantage? I really don't think that's true unless you are playing with the ZeroPing mod