Any cl_interp setting other than .1 exacerbates the problem. .1 seems to be the 'sweet spot' for minimizing it (but that honestly just could be my familiarity with the setting more than the problem being compounded).

There are definite, easy to recognize, small 'gaps' in my net_graph 3 each time the issue occurs. It's as if my client is either not accepting packets from the server for a short time or the server isn't sending them to me for a short time. I suppose it's possible there's another explanation but that seems the simplest to me - I'm just temporarily losing connection to the server every few seconds.

I realize I'm beating a dead horse at this point and that a complete server overhaul on the 16th may resolve everything, but I wanted to report my findings on the lerp settings as I had some time to test today.