Ah ha! (p2pool question I can't ask in the place where I want to ask it)

[Mogsington]

Very true, the encryption is based on random probability. so a 1mh/s miner could do it, but I feel I need to test this, I"m going to activate my cpu and begin testing this, I'll run it for 1 week 24/7 and come back with the results, I'll make sure to optimise my server for maximum efficiency... though hopefully no one starts downloading massive files while i'm doing this.

Er....
The phrase "within reason" may apply here. A 1MH/s client? Seriously? Let me know what that settles down to on the "Expected time to share" statistics. I've got a feeling you might get something like 50 days? Bear in mind that means you could easily see a gap between shares of 100 days if you had a bad luck run... Say 6 or 7 shares per year? Over a year I guess you might actually get something back. Not much. But slightly more than zero. You'd be gutted if you hit an orphan block though

[jdbtracker]

Very true, the encryption is based on random probability. so a 1mh/s miner could do it, but I feel I need to test this, I"m going to activate my cpu and begin testing this, I'll run it for 1 week 24/7 and come back with the results, I'll make sure to optimise my server for maximum efficiency... though hopefully no one starts downloading massive files while i'm doing this.

Er....
The phrase "within reason" may apply here. A 1MH/s client? Seriously? Let me know what that settles down to on the "Expected time to share" statistics. I've got a feeling you might get something like 50 days? Bear in mind that means you could easily see a gap between shares of 100 days if you had a bad luck run... Say 6 or 7 shares per year? Over a year I guess you might actually get something back. Not much. But slightly more than zero. You'd be gutted if you hit an orphan block though

lol!

just testing I know, doesn't hurt. my sense of curiosity is tingling,

[mochicoin]

I'm relatively new to p2pool mining but as I understand it, to decrease variance with any pool, one must increase hash rate and decrease difficultly. Getting more people on your local pool will increase hash rate and choosing an altcoin with low difficultly increases your chance of getting shares before blocks are found. In addition, finding more shares on average increases your chances of being within the last N shares used to calculate earnings. With that said I have a litecoin p2pool, you can find the link on my profile if your interested. We're working to bring down the variance because as you've noticed it can be frustrating seeing miners work for days without any apparent benefit.