I've been on a crappy mobile connection while traveling and have been more mindful of bandwidth usage. I've noticed the following:
Nostr seems to use an order of magnitude more bandwidth than X, despite me spending far more screen time on X.
I suspect this is because X controls the delivery of multimedia content and thus ensures it's downsampled and optimally compressed for mobile app rendering.
Whereas nostr media is hosted and delivered at the original raw file size at which it was uploaded.
Also: X uses 1 connection to 1 server. Or at least not many. Nostr sets up many?
Indeed. Though I'd hope that the redundant connections are only downloading the JSON notes and not also redundantly downloading multimedia content.
I think @primal cashing relay helps here.
Not sure about how other apps do it. But I have a feeling that they do download redundant notes.
Unless the app refreshes the filter parameters after each incoming note?
But it must be media that creates this issue, not text notes even if there were redundant downloads.
sounds sensible proposal? interested in your take/t-y
I'd think the solution would require media servers to accept additional parameters regarding screen size so that they can deliver optimized file sizes.
There's a NIP-96 ?w=<image-container-pixel-width> query param that clients should use when requesting images.
We should add something similar for videos
Yes. When I was using Silent Link, I disabled background data. And made Nostr Wi-Fi only. Otherwise it uses too much data.
Nostr has drained my data more than once. I even turn off media and everything when I use it with my cell data and it still eats megabytes per second when I open a client.
I don't think this is related to downloading media anymore. Strange that this isn't top priority since it definitely excludes most parts of the world by sheer demand for traffic.
Germany is so backwards 😂
Amethyst inexplicably drained 5gb in minutes this weekend even though i had the mobile settings set to be conservative
Just checked my data usage and Amethyst was my highest consuming app despite only being used on mobile data two days out of the month.
Thanks for the warning.
What client are you using?
Local caching of your feed + outbox model should solve this and also be flexible enough to allow you to exchange censorship-resistance and speed for network usage.
yup, same here, I can't do Nostr while not on WiFi as it will eat up my monthly data
selective media downloads would help
Isn't it because it downloads the same stuff from multiple relays?
The real question is why are you still on X?
Because nostr is preaching to the choir. Somebody's gotta preach to the ignorant normies.
Also X scales like hell nostr is a toy.
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