In the world of broadband internet, why is there still a bandwidth limit on steemit?

A common mis-understanding

From the early beginning, I know there is something called voting power. It is spent every time we upvote a post. It recovers gradually over time. It is something limited that we need to take into consideration.

Many people think bandwidth is something like voting power. That is to say, it is spent every time when you do something on steemit. And it recovers gradually over time as well.

This is a mis-understanding.

Bandwidth captured at 10:00

Bandwidth captured at 14:00

Above two pictures were captured at two different time about my remaining bandwidth. In between, I have not done anything on steemit. That is I have not consumed any resource on steemit during this time interval. You can see my remaining bandwidth was not "recovered" but decreased a little bit from from 99.75% to 99.08%.

What is bandwidth

Bandwidth on steemit is a measure to control your usage against overloading of the platform. When you have no remaining bandwidth, you are not able to post but to wait for a while.

If there were too many active users online all posting very frequently, the calculation of blocks may not be able to catch up and problem may occur in the blockchain.

What to do

When your bandwidth limit exceeded, nothing you can do but wait for a while. You will be able to post and comment after some time.

How to avoid

For a normal user, it is not difficult to avoid running out of bandwidth. Best practice of a Steem-friendly user is:

• Do not SPAM
• Post for quality, not quantity
• Avoid un-necessary comment. e.g. Thanks and you are welcome back and forth a few times
• Avoid the peak hours (usually the day time of US)

We will see a world of no traffic jam.

Thank you for reading.