Having tried PB1400c/117,133,166, and Sonnet G3/333, with various memory sizes from 32 to 64MB I agree completely with the previous comments from direct experience. MacOS 8.6 is as far as you want to go! On 56K dialups just by watching the data transfer modem activity indicators I can see that both data transfer time, and periods of pure CPU page rendering time, both contribute to the considerable wait for loading a page. With ethernet or wireless connections the CPU page rendering time becomes dominant and faster and cached CPUs really help. The Sonnet G3/333 with 64MB memory is really pleasant to use on the net. A 166 MHz with 48 MB memory is okay on simple pages but can be a bit slow on the more complex ones, like eBay.

RAM Doubler is for making stuff fit at all, it adds overhead but you may want to keep it until you get more memory, depending on what browser memory you require. For my uses I need to run a browser and have enough memory to open PDF files concurrently, so on some systems I retain either Ram Doubler set to double only, or have Virtual Memory on but set to 1 MB over physical memory size to allow file mapping but not encourage thrashing.

The browser choice depends on your browsing habits, and in my case one of my free ISP's use of javascript driven advertising banners. I've tried IE (5.1.7), Mozilla (1.3.1 WaMCom), and iCab (3.0.3). IE requires the least memory and is the fastest for me but does not render certain modern pages. (11.7 MB download, http://www.download.com/Internet-Explorer-Classic-/3000-2143_4-10217338.html )
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SE30, PB1400, PMG3DT, PMG4