How to use less bandwidth on steemit to avoid the bandwidth limitation problem

in steem-help •  7 years ago  (edited)

Since a lot of people are running into this problem, I thought I might help out and mention some ways you can avoid running into it yourself, or prevent running into it again or as often, etc.


This problem mostly applies to people with very little SP, where breaking these guidelines can get your account temporarily limited, so it may be worth your time to read.

bandwidthlimitation.png


So here is a list of things that can keep your bandwidth usage small:

❖ #1 - avoid editing a post multiple times
my testing shows this uses about the same bandwidth as if you made another post of the same size as the one you're editing. Do yourself a favor and proof read before posting, and if you must edit later try to do it all at once. Editing out one typo at a time 10 times in a row is probably the best way to destroy your remaining bandwidth.

❖ #2 - avoid editing a comment multiple times
this is basically the same as #1, since steem treats comments roughly the same as normal posts they also have the same behavior with bandwidth usage during edits, so again you should try to edit comments as few times as possible.

❖ #3 - try not to vote too much in a single day
I break this rule all the time, but if you have very little SP and have been dishing out $0.00 votes 100 times a day chances are you're inching closer to that bandwidth limit without even knowing it, so try cutting that number in half until your votes are worth a little bit more, it might even help your curation rewards to be more critical of what you vote on.

❖ #4 - don't follow more people than you can keep up with
If you're brand new and start by following a thousand people the odds of you being able to interact with any of them after are very small because you used all your bandwidth on the follows. If you can't justify voting a hundred times per day, you should also wait to follow a thousand people or more. Once you have more SP you can support more people, be patient until then.

❖ #5 - don't claim rewards every time you have 0.001SP pending
I know it's tempting to hit claim every time you see that box, but each claim also takes some bandwidth to do, so if more are coming just distract yourself for a while and claim rewards once or twice a day at most to cut down on the number of transactions.

❖ #6 - don't resteem everything you see, your followers don't like that anyway
My testing shows a resteem uses a large amount of bandwidth, and as a general rule you shouldn't resteem more things than what someone might post in a day. 4 resteems in a day is plenty to expect your followers to read, don't go into the double digits resteeming 20 posts a day trying to get a curation bonus or you might find yourself hitting the bandwidth limit.

❖ #7 - don't add giant signatures to your posts or comments
Some people like to add some huge premade signature area with links and pictures and their life story along with everything else they can think of for you to do to help them. My version of this is very small, because this signature thing also has the problem of raising the size of each post you make. Double trouble if you have a giant signature and go to edit the post a few times later.

❖ #8 - only comment when you actually have something to say
How many times have you seen spammy comments on people's blog where they clearly didn't read the post but comment anyway? I understand this is basically TLDR.com , but there's a difference between glossing over something and talking about the topic in general, and simply having nothing to say. This is realistically the best example of something the bandwidth limit exists to prevent, so don't go around to every post you see saying something generic in hopes of getting an upvote, people don't support that anyway, you're much better off commenting on topics where you actually have something to say!

❖ #9 - POWER UP
Once you hit the bandwidth limit, you can't do this and have to wait for recharge, so stay ahead of the curve and power up each time you're able. If you win some contest or have a pile of SBD laying around, take at least half and put it into SP, there's already a lot of reasons to do it and avoiding bandwidth limitation is just an icing on the cake.

Hope this helps you guys, if there was something you didn't already know in the list or you think it will help your followers consider using some of that bandwidth you got to RESTEEM ^_-


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thanks for reading


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It's funny how all one's questions seem to almost answer themselves here on this platform. Thank you for the time you invested in making this post. This really is some great helpful information for the newcomers such as myself.

Keep up the good work!

Seriously not trolling or nothing lol but the easiest way is to switch plans/ carriers. Every carrier these days randomly offers unlimitted plans when they are looking for more customers. If you get in during one of those deals, then ur locked in at that price and that data cap. This works even if ur already with that carrier. Just catch the deals and call in telling them u wanna change ur plan to that, or else ur gonna switch lol. It has worked so well for me and a few fam members on tmobile and 3 friends on verizon.

right, but the problem is tied to the platform where it limits bandwidth usage on the steem blockchain based on how much SP you have, so that new accounts can't come in spamming and crash everyone out of using steemit. It's also a way to ensure sybil/ddos attacks are pretty much useless here, but the side effect is that sometimes normal people run into the limitations, so these tips are given to help minnows avoid that.

Just to reiterate: you could have a 1tb/sec connection with unlimited data and still run into this problem after using a few mb of bandwidth on the blockchain, so you either need more SP or an understanding of how it works in order to avoid the problem, at least until it gets changed some more, which is another story.

Ahh i see now. Ya my bad im pretty newbish still. So is that what that number with the tiny arrow is for? Cuz it keeps going down the more I post. When would it get renewed?

A Strong women looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink
Cheer for world cup final for Team INDIA @aaravm and upvote post

ahaaa...now i understood it..i was thinking the same as @thefeetofpete and i was asking myself "wait,i have unlimited internet and high speed...why should i suffer?"..lol...great suggestion most of us didn't know that.

One way of saving a tiny bit of bandwidth that wasn't mentioned is to use Markdown instead of HTML. Making a level 2 header with markdown takes 3 characters, while it takes 8 with HTML for instance.

Thank you! I'm brand new and been frustratedly by the bandwidth thing. I also really knew nothing about how SBD and SP worked. I wish all of his was more intuitive. However, if it were too easy, there'd probably be 10x more spam and useless content. Great advice. Glad I followed you!

Very good insight! Sharing this with my crowd!

thank you ^_^

A Strong women looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink
Cheer for world cup final for Team INDIA @aaravm and upvote post

Nice ;)

@alphacore
Oh ... thank you my friend
I 'm new in this world , and i have just encountered this problem a few minute ago , and I did not understand why
It's much clear now ;)
Thanks
@geemo-from-paris

I'm glad to help ^_^

Upvoted and RESTEEMED!

thank you ^_^

Thanks @alphacore this is the clearest explanation I have found of what consumes your bandwidth. This is very helpful. I turned a little bit of ETH into steem power yesterday hoping it would stop the bandwidth limit exceeded error I was experiencing and it did not - but I see some things I was doing "wrong" now that I have read your post.

Thank you for the post, I've experienced it yesterday and I have not found the answer yet, I was wondering why this could happen,
It is such a coincidence
you showed up to post about the issue,
so my curiosity has been answered,
this post is very useful for me especially and for Other beginners in general so they can avoid this problem, thanks again.
@mahdie

This was such a help for me. I'm new on steemit and i just ran into this problem yesterday as i was getting notifications regarding me running out of bandwidth and i couldn't figure out why. Now all my doubts are cleared. Thank You so much, cheers. :)

Thanks for the post. I have not had any issues but I know a couple of my followers that have had some issues with it. Also these are just some good straight up tips anyway so I will resteem this one as well. Thanks again!

Thanks for putting this together. I suspect many of us are experiencing these issues. For me, over editing seemed to be what was up. Gave you a resteem @alphacore

this article has been referenced in: down the rabit hole -
the case of the bandwidth bug

Thanks for writing!

Quality upload @alphacore. I learned quite a bit from your post! Considering it is from 20 days ago, and it is not resteemable... I may write a similar guide for my followers and give proper honor for the inspirational figure that is @alphacore. Ty my mystical friend

Thanks for this. I have been hitting this issue and when I look at my edit behavior I can now understand why :)

steemit is a big learning curve for a new person, posts like this help to ease us minnows into this great platform.

Is there any way to check our current bandwidth remaining??

yea, just go to https://steemd.com/@darkhorse27
this will show your usage and some other stats, the only catch is the amount you are allowed to use can change over time based on the total bandwidth usage across steemit, but this will give you a general idea.

Thanks

I had this problem many times and had no idea who it happens and why. Your post explained the reasons and how to avoid it been happening . Very helpful .. thanks a lot for sharing this with us.. have a nice day

Very useful info for us to know and now we do....Thanks you to @alphcore
Must get my SP up...way up.
upvote & resteem

Good - Share to avoid editing a post multiple times

@alphacore WOW I broke all unwritten rules because I did not know!
Thanks for sharing 👍

To me this sounds like a usage feature to protect the blockchain rather than a error or bandwidth problem -if this protects from bots' and ddos attacks

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Oh I had no idea all these actions takes from the bandwidth!!
I thought only upvoting does !

And yeah i tried to power up when that happened 2 days ago and couldn't.

Thanks @alphacore for these info !

knowing is half the battle ^_^

First off, let me tell you that I absolutely respect that you took the time to write this post. I would like to share some of my thoughts to add to the conversation...

  1. The Bandwidth Limit Exceeded issue only began over the past 5 or 7 days, so something changed (and it wasn't HF 0.19.0).
  2. It sounds like you're telling minnows to decrease their posting, commenting, voting, resteeming, etc. Did you realize that this is fundamentally discouraging actively participating on the Steemit platform? Discouraging these activities is in line with telling people to spend $1,000.00 each on Steem to Power-Up and quit complaining.. or said in another way "Pay to Play". Which we all know is completely opposite of the purpose of the Steemit platform.

Your post was definitely well thought out, and I believe it had the best of intentions. I just feel that the tone implies people who reach their bandwidth limits are somehow ALL using Steemit in the wrong manner.

Personally, I don't over-vote, I don't over-comment, I don't over-edit, yet I experience a bandwidth limit exceeded message more frequently than ever, and much more frequently than necessary. I even experienced a Bandwidth Limit Exceeded when I was Offline for more than 1 hour and tried to comment approximately 15 words on someone else's post (I was denied before I was able to post my comment).

There is an underlying demon to this issue, whether it's all of the bots that are auto-posting, all of the bots that are up-voting when users pay SBD to them, all of the Whales who are creating multiple accounts, A negative effect from people actually earning full value if they post more than 4x in a day (the HF 0.17.0 update), etc.

There's something more going on here, and it is creating a huge barrier to entry, and disrupting Normal Traffic for new users who want to get exposure through being active on the platform. We need to figure out the underlying issue, because I honestly don't believe the current plan of action (changing the bandwidth algorithm) is going to be an effective long-term solution.

I would start the list with POWER UP

I like to save the best for last ;)

Thanks SO MUCH for sharing this, I'm a total newb around here and have had bandwidth problems and it turns out I've been doing most of those things.

at last someone compiled that badwith issue into body of knowledge, thank you.

wow... this is a very great post @alphacore. it is very great coming in this time because, including me, many people are facing this issue right now

the rent is too damn high party.

lol :D

What has changed to make this come up so much last few days. I never saw anything about it or got this till price steem went so low or maybe i missed something.

There is a bandwidth problem? Jeepers, I've nearly been on Steemit for a year and have never heard about this.

I pretty much do everything you recommend not doing as well!

Good job I'm a whale. Or a trout or something...

Very useful tips especially for beginners. I got an error yesterday when I decided to insert one word using Chinese in an otherwise English post. But when I deleted it the post went through. Found it a bit strange.

But yeah I'll follow these tips and of course following you too!

Thank you for the info very useful.

hope it saves you some trouble :)

Very informative article for a noob like me. Thanks. And what about uploading photos, does size or their number in a single post have any influence on the bandwidth ?

according to neoxian, the image size won't affect bandwidth since they're uploaded to a server instead of the blockchain directly, although I haven't tested it myself I imagine then if it's true the number of images can still have some impact because of the length of the image URL after uploading, but that being said, I think most of the bandwidth problems have been solved now ^_^

Ok, that great, but the servers, that host image files, are centralized and owned/rented by steem team?

How much SP do I need to not have this problem?!
I have been here close to 3 months ,and just started getting this today!
and today was relatively slow!
I would like to know i was not going to need to worry about this is it hundreds or thousands of SP to be safe!
thank you and namaste!

more SP is always good to have :)
how much you need depends on a lot of things, partly how much bandwidth you use and also how much everyone else is using, because the system automatically adjusts to throttle more strictly in times of higher bandwidth usage, so in that scenario being one of the people that doesn't use very much will help a lot.

Really awesome wordings i will definately share this in my area!!
Awesome work by @alphacore

Thanks heaps! That was super helpful!

This post has received a sweet gift of Dank Amps in the flavor of 25.00 % upvote from @lovejuice thanks to: @alphacore. Vote for Aggroed!

Thanks for your effort I will definitely try some of the tips.👍

Very cofusing...before posting this first comment i had 63% bandwith and after posting 72%. Hope this post dont make me fell 80% like it did before a few times 😂

Thanks, great tips! I didn't realise about the editing... I can be guilty of making little tweaks after posting, so I'll need to get my OCD fix before hitting post! ;)


This post got a 32.37 % upvote thanks to @alphacore - Hail Eris !

Useful, upvoted!

I thought maybe the problem had to do with whales powering down.

Ah, this was very useful! Thanks a bunch!

Thanks for sharing. Please follow me and upvote my post to encourage me

Very helpful post thank you i will definitely keep your post in mind ^-^

@alphacore got you a $1.88 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice!
@alphacore got you a $1.88 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)


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Thanks, good advice :)

Thanks for sharing! Yesterday was the first time I had the message pop up that I reached my limit and had no clue what that was about. This post definitely helped me understand how this works. 👍🏻

upvoted... very helpful.... ive done opposite of all you have sited... ive learned my lesson... i really dont understand the bandwith... but now im aware of it....

fully aware.... i will start being mindful of what you said...

big thanks... really appreciate it...

Thank you. Yes,I have been running into this problem. Now I see what I have been doing.

I hit the limit yesterday and I think it's down to me editing posts and comments. Thanks for the head up.

This was very educative. I shall try to follow most of the advice given.

Another Nice post for Helping Peoples on steemit thankyou For Sharing Appriciated

Valuable tips. Thank you.

This indeed is really helpful..especially to me...thanks for not keeping..steemit indeed brings ideas to life..steem on..upvoted

These are great tips, and I might be able to offer a more liberating one. Everyone's situation is different, but twice yesterday my colleagues had this exact problem. I suggested they clear their cache and browser history, and then to close their browser (Chrome in both cases) and reopen a clean window. In both cases, this was an instantly effective solution to the problem.

I hope this helps.

Awesome information @alphacore. Ill be checking out the rest of you stuff later. This bandwidth thing has been interesting

Great help! This is worldwide steemit problem right now

Great tips. It's one of those things I wouldn't think about.. Now I will.

Thank you for the info, it is very enlightening. Much appreciated.

Super helpful post! Thank you :D @alphacore

Oh no @alphacore! I'm a violator of #3 voting and #5 redeeming. So hard not to do both! Thanks for the great write up! :)

Thanks for your knowledge sharing!

I got a bellyRub and this post has received a 35.71 % upvote from @bellyrub thanks to: @alphacore.

wow

Thanks for this post @alphacore ... very useful tips

This post received a 4.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @alphacore! For more information, click here!

Lovely post

This post has received a 3.56 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @alphacore.

Had this happen to me, thought it was a glitch.

This is really helpful and I have two questions.

  1. Does following people take bandwidth just to have them? Or just at the moment you actually follow them?

I am following everyone I see who looks good here (most people!) as I hope to have a lot of followers. I follow people who make good comments on posts, for example.

  1. Do you get money for resteeming people without upvoting? I resteem often with no upvote just to let my friends see the post. I did not think I would get a payout for that. I just want the post on my feed.

Thanks nice post. Had some good pointers. Confirmed for me the question of editing. :)

Wow. I wish I had read this six days ago? Locked out. Before spent half an hour completing a post in edit which I had accidently posted while only half complete. Well that is what I love about steemit. Questions answered without even asking for them. Thank you for this. X

Nice, never thought that editing post and even comments can cause that bandwidth issue. :)

Very instantful post and very informative ...it has really help me on how i can stop having this error message....i learnt something new today, thank you very much for sharing...

Very helpful advice! I had no idea about the editing, even though I try to proof read a few times, there always seems to be something I miss. Thank you for this.

Thanks @alphacore this explains a lot.

I'm a picky SOB and don't like grammar, spelling or punctuation errors so I will often hit POST and then go "Shit, there should be a comma there." I do it on posts and on comments.

I've also been claiming rewards every time a new one shows up, although in my defense I always power up with them.

Thank you so much my friends @alphacore .. this is really a very valuable science for me, already resteem, for info to my follower..

New Followers get 0.001 SBD$ and an upvote for free!!

Just follow @steemvote and...

  • we follow back
  • send you 0.001 SBD to your wallet
  • upvote your newest posting

Great info thx alphacore 👌

followed

where is the resteem button ?/

Sweet, this a great tip thanks a lot for sharing. I do have that mistake of claiming all the time. Still 2 a day seems like a lot I think I'm safe :D
Soy tu tio

great post

nice job Upvoted :)

A goldmine of useful information. I am guilty of most points you mentioned here, and will do better from now on.
Thanks <3

thank you so much for sharing, it happened to me last night when i tried to post new content, now I'm monitoring my bandwidth at this very moment I'm at 77.14 %, your post helps me a lot to understand bandwidth limitation. Thank you so much.

This is absolutely vital information... I just joined yesterday... Spent all night making a new post and found out I've hid my bandwidth allocation already haha! Whoopsy... Thanks to this guide - as well as keeping an eye on it using Steemd - I'll be able to keep on top of that from now on... So thank you!

Keep up the great work informing noobies like me how to avoid the pitfalls!

Hart Floe
<3

Thank you for this post. It helped this newbie to really understand what has been happening for the past few days. Thank you!

Big help. In one week I have made just about every mistake listed.

Amen to that