I see that along with the new tixati release, some of the support pages have been updated.

I note in particular support.tixati.com/decentralized%20sharing%20channels now reveals details related to channel user levels that was not previously documented. References to these levels was interesting, but leaves me confused, wanting to know more:

Moderator: *** Pieces of this user's shared links are broadcast every 12 seconds.
Star: Pieces of this user's shared links are broadcast every 15 seconds.
VIP: Pieces of this user's shared links are broadcast every 20 seconds.
Trusted: Pieces of this user's shared links are broadcast every 30 seconds.
Normal: *** Pieces of this user's shared links are broadcast every 15 seconds.

It seems that higher levels have a reduced broadcast time...with the quizzical exception of the 'normal'/default level, which is given the same level as the STARs.

Aside from that anomaly, what effect does this broadcast frequency have on channel users in general and on users with particular levels and what are the cost-benefit considerations related to this frequency of broadcast?

So for Alice who is sharing say 1000 links, what would be the effect on Alice AND for all other channel users, if Alice is set to Moderator rather than trusted, with 12 and 30 second broadcast intervals respectively?

Also, if these broadcast intervals do significantly impact a user and a channel, what are the intervals for all the other users, such as owner, manager, operator and such?

From what I tested, channels with majority of normal users do have lower bandwidth than ones filled mostly with high level users. I didn't see any difference if I was normal user or high level user, I guess I receive all channel data, no matter what my level is. Channels with streaming user take a lot more bandwidth, it doesn't matter if I play the stream or not.

I suppose what I am trying to get at, since normal has a a broadcast interval of 15 seconds versus trusted at 30, would setting the default level to trusted reduce bw usage? and of what effect on functionality?

Currently very few people make lists to advertise, but now that shares are visible, awareness of this function should grow.

It's been a very long time but still relevant.
Big channels are bandwidth hogs many users cannot afford to have running in the background.

Channel directives page still gives the very frequent (default) settings for channel updates. I guessed that IR (information rate) is for channel topic information; SR (share rate) is self-explanatory.

##ctrl:sr=161,165,170,175,260&ir=140
These are the settings I've currently set, still work in progress. I do not know what exactly 'minimum broadcast rate' (pr) or 'maximum broadcast rate' (mr) are. I've not touched them, pr is adapted automatically.
This allowed me to reduce channel bandwidth by a factor of 3-6!

The more shares, the more users the more bandwidth is required with default settings. This should be clear. If I understand correctly, IR is only responsible for updating the channel topic. If you have nothing written there - great. If you have a very long description, you'd want to increase that parameter as well from the default.

Current progress:
* these settings do NOT affect forum/chat delays. They seem to be separate from those and effectively instant!
* I have not observed any noticable increase of time needed to download channel's shares
* I could not test whether channel join time increased

My question: is it safe to increase these values further? What if I set share rate to 20 minutes? Will it only affect updating share information or slow down share propagation between members (new user joins and has to wait for over 20 minutes to retrieve all shares?) Most people update their shares once in a blue moon, if the setting does not negatively affect new users, I would not hesitate to set it to 15-30-60 minutes of refresh time.