There is nothing wrong with the coin chain. The seed nodes are way overloaded at the moment so it may take a while for you to get a connection. Someone posted some addnodes earlier but im sure those are full too
Thanks Cartman. Once I have the blockchain downloaded I'll have another p2pnode (cartman git) running!
Cool, the more nodes the better
All found blocks are simultaneously announced across all the node wallets so the p2pool chances of winning against orphans is high.
There are so many benefits to p2pool over pushpools (In my opinion) but they do require that you configure your miner correctly. Bad miners can have a negative effect on a node seen by high DOAs. P2Pools are like solo mining but you get the benefit of the combined hash rate. Any miner who want to maximize their mining I feel should run a p2pool node
Note: I should point out that one of the drawbacks is a bunch of smaller payments to your wallet.