Low bandwidth mode - optional blob syncing

[georgeowell]

What's the problem you want solved?

After chatting with with ol' neauoire on Masto. They said that they didn't use Scuttlebutt anymore because it uses too much bandwidth which is hard to come by when you're on a boat.

This is because there is no way to turn off downloading blobs.

Is there a solution you'd like to recommend?

A low bandwidth mode to turn off automatic replication of blobs. This should be opt-in.

Nice to have

• Command line option
• Click to download a blob
• A way to measure how much bandwidth you are using/used.

What version or commit of Oasis are you using?

Latest

[christianbundy]

Could you link me to the discussion? I'd be very curious to learn what percentage of bandwidth is spent on blobs.

[georgeowell]

Done. What else would it be though?

I think maybe they're referring to that inital sync problem when you've been offline for a while but have loads of connections, all of those blobs being gossiped in one time is a lot. Obviously trickle syncing would be desirable but this is a quick fix.

[christianbundy]

The other culprit would be messages, especially since blobs aren't downloaded until you try to view them. I've been thinking that it might be best to start people off with only 1 hop, only increasing when people specifically ask for more of the network. Here's my personal stats about feeds within:

• 1 hop: 387
• 2 hops: 5572 (+ 387)
• 3 hops: 11340 (+ 5572 + 387)

If that's a typical setup, we could reduce the bandwidth by ~94% by reducing the number of hops to 1.