Resolving Bandwidth Limit Exceeded Error
Why Does This Happen?
Many users are likely getting "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" error at the moment.
The reason for this is simple, lots of users are trying to use the network right now, but we only allow so much to happen per block. We limit this in order to prevent the costs of running a witness node from skyrocketing.
Steem's solution to the problem of limitless demand for network bandwidth and storage, is to allocate bandwidth according to stake. This is done dynamically, and ensures that everyone with at least some stake will get to use the network, although perhaps not all at the same time. If you're interested in reading up on this system, it is a bit beyond the scope of this post so I will refer you to the Steem Whitepaper.
What Can I do About It?
Solution 1. Delegate them some Steem Power yourself.
If you have a decent amount of SP available, you can solve this for your friend yourself. If you don't have much SP, skip this option.
Use the following URI:
Replace [youraccountname] and [theiraccountname] accordingly. This will allocate about 9.6 Steem Power to your friend at the current rate. You will need to enter your Active Key or your main password into the SteemConnect form. This should allow them to continue to post for now, and after they have built up enough Steem Power of their own, you can take it back with the following URL:
Solution 2. Contact a whale or witness to delegate Steem Power
Whales and witnesses have an incentive to take care of the network. We can't expect every user to be able to supply their own bandwidth, but it's in our interest to make sure legitimate users can post freely. So just ask one of us to perform the steps as shown in solution 1 above.
Solution 3. Purchase a Steem Power Delegation from Minnowbooster or Blocktrades
If you can't contact a whale or witness to solve this, you may be able to lease a delegation of Steem Power from a service provider.
Solution 4. Lobby the witnesses to increase the bandwidth per block
Increasing the bandwidth limits is kind of kicking the can down the road. Nonetheless, as the network scales we will need to be handling vast amounts of transactions, even if spam is 100% eliminated. The problem is that when we increase them now, the bandwidth is quickly consumed by spam, making the problem soon recur, only now our witness nodes are more expensive to run.
The ideal solution is to make sure that legitimate users have all the stake they need to post, and spam users are constrained, and only then increase the bandwidth limits. This isn't entirely realistic as many legitimate users will drop away from a bad user experience. It needs to be managed carefully. Nonetheless, witnesses will likely be forced to increase this limit quite soon.
Please consider voting for me as witness!