Do You Have a Small Account? Beware of Your Bandwidth Level!
I didn't think I had a problem with bandwidth on steemit... until yesterday! Don't get me wrong, I had questions about what is bandwidth for and how it works right from my very first days on the platform, but many of them were left unanswered until yesterday.
It contributed to this situation the fact that I didn't seem to have an issue with my bandwidth, it never dropped below 40%. Also until yesterday. Now it sits comfortably at above 90%.
I still haven't completely figured out how it works, but here is what I understood already:
- bandwidth is consumed by every action you perform on the blockchain, but it also regenerates in time
- the amount of bandwidth you have and the rate at witch it regenerates are lower for under-powered accounts (usually new ones) and higher for powered up accounts (25-30 SP minimum to avoid any issues); not sure if this is directly proportional with the amount of Steem Power though.
- at the moment, if you have zero Steem Power, you have no bandwidth and you practically can't do anything on steemit or any other app from the Steem blockchain! Attention for those who think to fully power down!
Here are a few actions that consume bandwidth that you might not have thought before: editing your posts and comments, re-steeming, even refreshing Steemd to check on your bandwidth.
I have to thank @brandonfrye for researching the subject and publishing this post yesterday for the wake-up call on the bandwidth issue and the information needed to counteract it.
Another source you may want to consider reading is the one presenting the proposal for the next hard fork of Steem blockchain. There are some issues addressed there, mainly concerning new accounts. The article is rather old, hopefully these are still the directions they are going with for the 20th fork (or an update would be nice :) ):
/steemit/@steemitblog/proposing-hardfork-0-20-0-velocity
Although I initially planned to go slowly and only use rewards to fully power up, in light of this discovery I decided to buy some STEEM and power up, to avoid any future potential bandwidth glitches on this platform which I came to like very much. So, now I have 44 SP, and with it a large bandwidth and an increased voting power! :)
As time has passed, I learned that available bandwidth is also related to the general activity on the blockchain. The higher the activity the lower the limit of bandwidth everyone has. When activity is low, the limit goes higher for everyone.
This is mostly important for under-powered accounts (less than 25-30 Steem Power) or extremely active accounts.
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It's a lesson a lot of people learn the hard way LOL
I'm sitting here on a dlive stream, taking part in the discussions....But seeing my bandwidth go down.
It's crazy. But good to know it can bump back up.
So I guess dlive drains bandwidth... It makes sense, but thanks, I didn't know that.
Interesting, I did not know that, I'm glad they are working on getting people to get steem power :)
Yeah, from what I understood, it is more of resolving the issue of high costs for creating new accounts and also allowing a minimum bandwidth for anyone who fully powers down and is left with 0 SP.
Cool cool