Solo mining... how to do?

[Meatball]

Yeah, unless you are able to find a block at least every other day solo mining (you need at least 50 GH/s right now to do that), I'd go pool.

Even if the average miner makes 1 block every 3 months, the payout for mining solo would still be higher than mining in a pool. Most people make around .2-.7 a day judging by block statistics on most pools. 3 months is a hell of a long time to get lucky when your miners are running 24/7. My last card (running @ 340 Mh/s) that I bought at the last difficulty found a block only a week after I bought it. It doesn't even run 24/7 as I bought it for my father in exchange for him running it during the day while he's not using it. In the end it does depend a lot on luck, but the quoted claim is simply outrageous. I would never waste even 10GH on a pool.

I wouldn't plop 10GH/s down solo. But I'm an avowed pooler, as my luck dictates I must be. I've generated about 400BTC give or take since may from pools, or 8 blocks worth. In that same time, I've generated as far as I can tell 0 actual blocks according to my statistics.  This would be a sad state of affairs to have found myself in. I for one would agree that without sufficient hashing power to ensure you see a semi-regular generation, going solo feels too risky. But I'm not a gambler.

Yeah, +1 to this.  I'm running about 8.5 GH since May (when the difficulty was a measly 150K) and have made about 330 BTC.  In that time I've found 3 blocks for the pools I've been with, 2 of which I found in the first week.  So for about 2 weeks I was kicking myself for not being solo, but for the following 7 weeks I was thanking my lucky stars.  I wouldn't even consider trying going solo with under 20 GH because variance is a bitch.  It's one thing when a pool has a round that's 2 or 3x variance.  That sucks for a little while.  When a solo miner has 2 or 3x variance it could easily knock him past the next one or two difficulty jumps making it even worse.

[Meatball]

Another benefit of pools that people completely forget is the fact that you can react to the market.  So let's take a hypothetical situation where on average you should find 1 block every week, you'd likely also make ~50 BTC a week, so say 7 a day minus fees.  Let's say 5 days into your mining the market shoots up and BTC/$ suddenly double in price.  If you are solo mining, there's a chance you have 0 BTC.  If you are pooled mining, you have 35 BTC you could sell if you'd like.

Pooled mining and the trickle of income gives you a better chance to react to market moves if you are inclined to that sort of thing.

[AreYouCereal]

You are correct. Transaction fees get paid out to you when you find the block.

Solo mining is a good way to go, or if you're into pools then join small ones or start ones with friends. There's too many people mining in large pools these days. Too many pool operators getting paid for doing nothing but a little server maintenance -_-.

Anyone know what the average transaction fee premium is on top of the 50btc for finding a block.
Do the pools just keep this to make their profit or take a little cream off the top so to speak?

[gnaget]

It varies dramatically, but I'm sure the average is < 1%.  Very few transactions have any transaction fees, and as far as I know no miners require a transaction fee so it is a safe bet to not include one on transactions and they'll still be picked up in the first block

[XRcode]

Ive made around 25 BTC so far, and generated 1 block 100% certain


I would have over twice as much BTC if started mining solo two weeks ago, rather than pooled.


But I don't really mind that much because I have yet to see how much I have made by my second block.

[gnaget]

Ive made around 25 BTC so far, and generated 1 block 100% certain


I would have over twice as much BTC if started mining solo two weeks ago, rather than pooled.


But I don't really mind that much because I have yet to see how much I have made by my second block.

You wouldn't have generated that block if you were running solo.  Part of the header which is being hashed, is the merkle root which contains all the transactions including the 50 blocks which go into the pool's address.  If you were soloing, then that transaction would have been to your address, thus you would have had a completely different merkle root, and you would have had completely different results from the hashing. 

[XRcode]

How do you know? I think that with the million+ workshares I have completed its pretty likely that I would have found a block mining solo too by now.

[DrHaribo]

The answer is obvious. Since my pool is paying +5% bonus on the first 60 blocks, it is more profitable than soloing.

There's no point thinking about whether you have more or less luck and what you should do because of that. Luck is completely random. If you don't agree with this, try praying while mining - see if it helps.

[evlew]

How do I point phoenix on my linux rig to my windows machine hosting namecoind?

whenever i try to connect with the usualy -u http://user:pass@ipaddress:port it doesn't work
just says failed to connect...

Is there a log anywhere?  I do not want to mine locally I want to do it across my LAN from 2 machines.

[gnaget]

How do you know? I think that with the million+ workshares I have completed its pretty likely that I would have found a block mining solo too by now.

I wouldn't say likely, remember it is all random.  The workshares represent a difficulty 1 success, so with the current difficulty you need an _average_ of 1.6 million shares before you would have generated a block.  I don't know if you would have generated one or not, hell I don't even know if you would have generated 2, or 3 or 10.  I can only speak in mathematical probabilities, which is a far cry from "knowing".

I can tell you, in the 3 weeks I was running under my own instance of pushpool, I generated around 1.5 million shares without generating a single block.  Randomness sucks.  

One other thing I do know, the specific block you generated you wouldn't have generated if you weren't in the pool.

[gnaget]

How do I point phoenix on my linux rig to my windows machine hosting namecoind?

whenever i try to connect with the usualy -u http://user:pass@ipaddress:port it doesn't work
just says failed to connect...

Is there a log anywhere?  I do not want to mine locally I want to do it across my LAN from 2 machines.

No log that I am aware of.  If you are getting a failed to connect, the issue might be a firewall on your windows machine.  You can try adding an exception, or disabling it altogether until you can solve the problem.  Another thing you can try is to telnet to the ipaddress and port and see if it connects.

[evlew]

No log that I am aware of.  If you are getting a failed to connect, the issue might be a firewall on your windows machine.  You can try adding an exception, or disabling it altogether until you can solve the problem.  Another thing you can try is to telnet to the ipaddress and port and see if it connects.

good idea i will try the telnet thing when I get home.  I already tried disabling firewall.  Am I correct in using that command though?

[gnaget]

good idea i will try the telnet thing when I get home.  I already tried disabling firewall.  Am I correct in using that command though?

Yes, your -u argument formatting is correct

[CrazyGuy]

  In a perfect world, solo mining vs 0% fee pooled mining should be no different. However, we are not in a perfect world... Since I started mining a month ago I have woken up on 4 different occasions where my miners were idle all night due to a network outage or ddos attack on one of the pools. Solo mining is much more desirable in the sense that you control the server and you can pretty much guarantee 100% uptime, unless you forget to pay your power bill...

  With that said, I only have 800mh/s and I'm not going to risk waiting a couple months for a block so I mine in a pool. (I am solo mining namecoins at the moment) If you are are pushing over 10 gh/s though, you may want to try going solo. If you go after a pool, come up with a good method of redirecting all your cards to a different pool in the event of an outage.

[Meatball]

poclbm now has a --backup flag where you can set a backup pool to fail over too if the primary pool is down.  Works like a champ...