I started out with imposing a pretty basic limitation on network requests made to the server. The method I used was the limit_req_zone rate limiting module of Nginx.
At first, I wanted to ensure the Node didn't get crippled from an overload of network requests, but, the past 3 days have shown that I can loosen the restrictions up a bit.
As you can see from the last 3 days of data, there are periods of times where the network activity is higher than others. However, the traffic is fairly reasonable at this point.
Because of this, the RPC node will allow more requests per second (up to 20r/s), and more burst requests (up to 1000). This has made my personal sites that rely on the RPC node CONSIDERABLY faster and more responsive. Hopefully other users will notice the same benefit.
@netuoso as STEEM Witness.I am working on developing a NGINX plugin or module that will inspect JSON traffic and route connections to defined servers based on a configuration file. Hopefully this will help buy STEEM some time while a true scaling option is worked on. Remember that STEEM is brand new as far as cryptocurrency and technology goes and, thus, will require commitment from the community to ensure its success.
@netuoso as WitnessAnd especially to 
