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So, what happens online that's different?!

In simple terms, this is what happens in a game of cs (the protocol between us, the player, and the server).

This is happening in a constant loop, the speed of this depends on how high your cmdrate and update rate are (we'll go into this a second).

Server: Relay positions of all players to each player in game (this happens x number of times per second, whatever your 'cl_updaterate' is set to)
Client: Receive positions from server.
Client: Send data to the server. (this happens x number of times per second, whatever your 'cl_cmdrate' is set to).

Then the whole process happens again, constantly looping however many times per second you allow it to. The main problem is, there is a limit to how much data you can send over the internet per second, because it's all relatively low speed stuff, some people's speed is slower than others too!

So, each player cannot receive constant exact information about everyone's position...

So the client 'interpolates' the position.
Interpolation is a fancy computing term which means guesstimating. It's like a game of join the dots. Here's a basic explanation of how this works:

Let's say that 1 was a player.. Then your screen ...

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

You would only see the player's position at the last update, until you get the next update... the player would be very jerky.

So programmers came up with an idea..
We know the player starts here and will most likely end here based on angle speed etc... Why don't we guess where he will be in-between the gaps of updates..

So the 0 represents the guesswork.

100010001000100010001

So now it looks smooth.. The client PC guesses the differences, and everyone's happy!
Guess? you may think.. Well, it's actually a very good system, and a very efficient way of showing player's position, since the server doesn't need to send as much data. This means our pathetic internet connections can keep up with a lightning fast game like counter-strike source, while staying smooth.

Right, now that Valve have come up with a way of getting us all moving nicely... let's start shooting the living daylights out of each other!