If you are a proud fledgling minnow, like myself, and are waking up in the morning bright-eyed and ready to take on the steem world by force, ideas for original and compelling content in your mind just waiting to be unleashed, only to find this:

(insert @ account here) bandwidth limit exceeded. Please wait to transact or power up STEEM.

Don't panic. You have not been banned, you're not being punished and, most importantly:

You, my friend, are not alone.

What’s Bandwidth and What’s Happening

Bandwidth is a rate limiter. It helps slow down chain interactions to help keep spam down and the network moving efficiently.

A little techy?

Bear with me for a moment and let’s imagine bandwidth, the capacity of what Steem can handle (as far as posts, comments, upvotes, edits, etc.), as a large bag of m&m's - with me?

_{(it’s a quite a bit of m&m's)}

You need an m&m for every interaction you make on Steem, but there are only so many m&ms in the bag.

The server prioritizes those who have an investment in Steem (Steem Power – SP), granting bandwidth priority based on the SP of accounts. Thus, the m&ms go to these users who have invested more in the platform, usually longer standing members who have created a lot of quality content.

With the explosion of SP and STEEM price, more people are both creating accounts and posting, including an uptick in postings and interactions by the larger accounts here on Steem.

This has gotten to the point where there are not enough m&ms for all the interactions happening on Steem, remember that there are only so many in the bag (so many interactions that bandwidth can process).

Thus, newer accounts who haven’t done enough yet to build steem don’t have any m&ms left when it gets to our turn to interact.

What This Means For New Steemians

As many of us have already noticed, there can be large chunks of the day when interacting with Steem is actually impossible.

Peak hours tend to be around 9:00am – 1:00pm EST, when US Steem users are most active. During these times, without any interaction with the platform for the past 12 hours, I’ve seen my bandwidth fall below -200% quite frequently.

To clarify, all accounts are being trottled in relation to peak bandwidth an equal amount.

That said, since SP is tied to priority, anyone below the threshold (usually us newer accounts) being set by the use the server is seeing can find their bandwidth dropping below 0% to allow the server to function properly.

Meanwhile, the same % server drop for larger accounts only sees their bandwidth go down 10% or so - it's relative to the SP they've invested in the platform.

Everyone is affected, not just those of us who have not grown our account above the Steem designated 15 SP threshold, but we are in the cut off zone currently for bandwidth overloads.

This is tied by a recent move by Steem to lower the designated SP to new accounts from the original 28 SP to the current 15 SP to try and balance the growth the platform is seeing - again, you’re not alone!

Why This is A Big Problem

What’s the best way for us minnows to grow our accounts here on Steem so that we can get enough SBD and Steem to get above that 15 SP threshold? Create and post quality original content and otherwise comment and interact with the community around us, of course!

…we need bandwidth to do that; which we can’t have unless we have SP from our posts; which can’t be posted without bandwidth; which we don’t have unle… you see the problem.

Unfortunately, there might not be an easy fix, and this does mean that interactions will be impossible during these peak server hours. So…

What You Can Do About It?

1) Monitor.

You can check your bandwidth at steemd.com/@(accountname) , this will help you know when you can interact. That said, don’t just stare at the page refreshing and hoping for something different – use that time productively! How, maybe…

2) Plan and Prioritize.

Plan what you are going to do when you do have SP again. Want to write a post? GREAT! Get into wordpad, word or other html sites that aid with markdown like hackmd.io or @busy.org (which even allows for drafts - wow!)

Want to leave an awesome comment? same thing! Save links to tabs you want to interact with so that you can quickly pull them up when server interactions ease down again.

Want to edit? Please don't! this is probably the worst thing you can do since every edit you make will use the full amount of bandwidth it would take to effectively 'repost' from scratch - plan accordingly so that your edits will be at a minimum. This could also be a good time to…

3) Build Your Steemit Community.

Building community isn’t only done on Steem, get on servers on discord and interact with the community in chats! It takes no m&ms, and it can be a fun way to learn more about your fellow steemians and meet like interested creators.

I'm regularly over at @IsleofWrite for all things literature, and places like @minnowsupport are literally built to help Newsteemians acclimate to the Steem ocean, and these are just scraping the surface.

Get out there, find channels with your interests, and learn from some experienced Steamy Steemians. Ask some questions, they don't usually bite. While you're at it, be sure to...

4) Power Up!

Power up your SBD to Steem as soon as you can! Just getting above that 15 SP threshold will help a bit with minimizing the time you're locked out, but it'll take a good investment to make bandwidth issues a problem of the past for your account.

That said, with more SP comes more priority by the servers, so what better time to start now. And, while you're at it…

5) Be Patient.

Steem wasn't built in a day, the old saying goes, and, while I from experience know it can be hard because you want to grow from a minnow to a whale shark right meow, please remember that patience is a virtue.

Steem is growing, the community is growing, understand there will be growing pains. Everything won’t always be perfect, but know that there is a helpful community working hard behind the scenes to try and resolve these issues.

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Please let me know if you have any questions, happy to talk about my experiences of being locked out various times the past week for hours without having interacted with steem at all up to ~10 hours previous!

Ideas for solutions?! You’re a smarter one than me, leave them down and let’s get some bright ideas voted up so steem can seem some possible ways to move forward.

Have other ways or tools to productively use your time during bandwidth blackouts? Put them in the comments! Would be happy to publish a future list w/ @(usernames) of anyone who has some quality solutions for us Newsteemians!

thank you to @geekorner and @crimsonclad for their patience in helping me learn enough to write this post. Also, @jrswab is hosting a contest for us minnows where, if chosen, he will delegate SP to give you more bandwidth, linked here.

And a HUGE thank you to @swelker101 for delegating me SP so I could have enough m&m's, i mean, bandwidth to publish this post - Saint Shane is my hero!

_{all images are creative commons or public domain. 'Holoween Candy No More' is CC 2.0 attributed to Michael Ocampo}