`setup-node` comes pre-installed on the appliance with GHES if Actions is enabled. When dynamically downloading Nodejs distributions, `setup-node` downloads distributions from [`actions/node-versions`](https://github.com/actions/node-versions) on github.com (outside of the appliance). These calls to `actions/node-versions` are made via unauthenticated requests, which are limited to [60 requests per hour per IP](https://docs.github.com/en/rest/overview/resources-in-the-rest-api#rate-limiting). If more requests are made within the time frame, then you will start to see rate-limit errors during downloading that looks like: `##[error]API rate limit exceeded for...`. After that error the action will try to download versions directly from the official site, but it also can have rate limit so it's better to put token.
To get a higher rate limit, you can [generate a personal access token on github.com](https://github.com/settings/tokens/new) and pass it as the `token` input for the action:
```yaml
uses: actions/setup-node@v3
with:
token: ${{ secrets.GH_DOTCOM_TOKEN }}
node-version: 16
```
If the runner is not able to access github.com, any Nodejs versions requested during a workflow run must come from the runner's tool cache. See "[Setting up the tool cache on self-hosted runners without internet access](https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server@3.2/admin/github-actions/managing-access-to-actions-from-githubcom/setting-up-the-tool-cache-on-self-hosted-runners-without-internet-access)" for more information.
description:'Optional scope for authenticating against scoped registries. Will fall back to the repository owner when using the GitHub Packages registry (https://npm.pkg.github.com/).'
token:
description:Used to pull node distributions from node-versions. Since there's a default, this is typically not supplied by the user.
default:${{ github.token }}
description:Used to pull node distributions from node-versions. Since there's a default, this is typically not supplied by the user. When running this action on github.com, the default value is sufficient. When running on GHES, you can pass a personal access token for github.com if you are experiencing rate limiting.