Free cloud-based stratum proxy for Slush & BTCGuild (beta)

[dbbit]

Ok, I'm upgrading eastcoastbtc with another processor. Let's see how it goes.

You'll notice a small service interruption in eastcoastbtc - if you have your blades correctly configured, they should fall over to another server automatically within a few seconds.

Done. I've upgraded eastcoastbtc, followed by upgrading westcoastbtc.

Please let me know if you're on that server if you're experiencing a difference in performance (either better or worse).

[gbsray]

Hi dbbit,

I want to thank you for setting the up. I've had 10 Asicminer blades connecting to eastcoastbtc for a couple weeks now without any issues. Your cloud proxy is the only way I have been able to keep the blades connected for longer than a few minutes at a time. Using my own proxy with mining_proxy.exe or bfgminer on an HP Z220 workstation running Windows 7 and a HP DL380 G5 server running Server 2003, they start out fine but after 2-9 minutes they stop getting work and restart. Have been actively working on a solution but so far no luck. Power or heat dont seem to be the issue, I'm looking at the networking aspect and thought I was on to something when I realized all the desktop OS's have a max connections limit of 20max. So I setup the Windows server in my data center at work but no luck, same issue

So again, Thanks very much for your efforts. Do you have a time frame for shutting this down?

Awesome Job.

[dbbit]

Do you have a time frame for shutting this down?

Well, if I can figure out a way to break even with my costs on this proxy, I can keep them running indefinitely. My costs at the moment is around $250 per month so far. I can carry it for a little while longer, but at some point it will be a bit much, since it keeps increasing per month.

However, would everybody be interested to keep connecting if I use a small portion of your blade power (let's say 1%, but maybe 0.5% will be sufficient) to mine under my own account? It will be like a pool fee. Just trying to recover costs - not looking to make money here.

I could also ask for donations, but I can't scale with that. With a %, if I get 100 times the number of clients connecting, I can easily just configure 100 times the amount of processing power to match (got to love Azure).

Any other ideas?

[TerraHasher]

Do you have a time frame for shutting this down?

Well, if I can figure out a way to break even with my costs on this proxy, I can keep them running indefinitely. My costs at the moment is around $250 per month so far. I can carry it for a little while longer, but at some point it will be a bit much, since it keeps increasing per month.

However, would everybody be interested to keep connecting if I use a small portion of your blade power (let's say 1%, but maybe 0.5% will be sufficient) to mine under my own account? It will be like a pool fee. Just trying to recover costs - not looking to make money here.

I could also ask for donations, but I can't scale with that. With a %, if I get 100 times the number of clients connecting, I can easily just configure 100 times the amount of processing power to match (got to love Azure).

Any other ideas?

I think this is a great thing, and think it should defiantly be scale as time goes on, and i am open donating, or helping how i can here and there. Why dont you work something up, and i will help you make it public. A 1 page website (landing page) for donations. i could easily do that for you. so you can link to it and have people donate BTC through it direct to your address. or maybe a "pool fund" where a $ per month is set and we all chip in until it is met for the next month or it goes down. i am sure that there are a few hundred people using this now. even if each paid a dollar a month we could collectively cover the cost. and even maybe help fund a few more servers. i would love to see one pop up in the mid-west USA, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois or something like that, i have notice that however small it is, the distance to the server does have an impact i have tested it on all four servers to find my best speed.

[magnito]

Hello, is it possible to get GHash information from the proxy itself ?  How about per connected users?  Just curious.

-Magnito

[Swimmer63]

I am having trouble with my ASICMINER blades.  I think I'm following everything from the OP. 
Can some one tell me where I'm going wrong?

IP  192.168.1.200   
Mask   255.255.255.0
Gateway  192.168.1.1
WEB Port  8000
Primary DNS   192.168.1.1   
Secondary DNS  211.148.192.141
Ports   8335,8335
Server addresses  westcoastbtc.cloudapp.net,eastcoastbtc.cloudapp.net   
user:pass     Swimmer63_xxxxxx.x,Swimmer63_xxxxxxx.x

[TerraHasher]

I am having trouble with my ASICMINER blades.  I think I'm following everything from the OP. 
Can some one tell me where I'm going wrong?

IP  192.168.1.200   
Mask   255.255.255.0
Gateway  192.168.1.1
WEB Port  8000
Primary DNS   192.168.1.1   
Secondary DNS  211.148.192.141
Ports   8335,8335
Server addresses  westcoastbtc.cloudapp.net,eastcoastbtc.cloudapp.net   
user:pass     Swimmer63_xxxxxx.x,Swimmer63_xxxxxxx.x

2 things, first change the IP of your blade to 201 instead of 200, i would be willing to bet you have a belkin router if you are having issues. Next change your DNS's to 8.8.8.8 and secondary 8.8.4.4

99.99% chance that will resolve your issue. also use two ports not just the one repeated. so change one to 8336

[dbbit]

Hello, is it possible to get GHash information from the proxy itself ?  How about per connected users?  Just curious.

-Magnito

Not as far as I know. I've been meaning to modify mining_proxy to give me those kind of stats, but haven't gotten to it yet.

[Swimmer63]

I am having trouble with my ASICMINER blades.  I think I'm following everything from the OP.  
Can some one tell me where I'm going wrong?

IP  192.168.1.200   
Mask   255.255.255.0
Gateway  192.168.1.1
WEB Port  8000
Primary DNS   192.168.1.1   
Secondary DNS  211.148.192.141
Ports   8335,8335
Server addresses  westcoastbtc.cloudapp.net,eastcoastbtc.cloudapp.net   
user:pass     Swimmer63_xxxxxx.x,Swimmer63_xxxxxxx.x

2 things, first change the IP of your blade to 201 instead of 200, i would be willing to bet you have a belkin router if you are having issues. Next change your DNS's to 8.8.8.8 and secondary 8.8.4.4

99.99% chance that will resolve your issue. also use two ports not just the one repeated. so change one to 8336

No belkin router. Have had these running fine off a local proxy on another pool. But I can't get to work with btcguild 22 blades and recently 3 cubes.
Hopefully changing the DNS's will be the answer.
Thanks!

[Swimmer63]

Gracias TerraHasher!

Up and running on all blades/cubes.  I also had the port wrong.  Too many numbers in my head.

[Swimmer63]

It was running good for a while but now my speed is down to 2-3 Gh/s per blade.  Any suggestions?

[dbbit]

It was running good for a while but now my speed is down to 2-3 Gh/s per blade.  Any suggestions?

Which server/port are you connecting to?

Check your internet speed at speedtest.net as well.

[Swimmer63]

It was running good for a while but now my speed is down to 2-3 Gh/s per blade.  Any suggestions?

Which server/port are you connecting to?

Check your internet speed at speedtest.net as well.

8885,8886

Called Centurylink and had them run diagnostic.  Says I'm getting full speed.  PC directly connected to the router are running fine.
Other miners running fine.  Very odd.

[eleuthria]

It was running good for a while but now my speed is down to 2-3 Gh/s per blade.  Any suggestions?

Which server/port are you connecting to?

Check your internet speed at speedtest.net as well.

8885,8886

Called Centurylink and had them run diagnostic.  Says I'm getting full speed.  PC directly connected to the router are running fine.
Other miners running fine.  Very odd.

Since those are BTC Guild ports, have you tried resetting your stats on the dashboard?  BTC Guild's speed estimates are based on an hour if you've been mining that long.  If you had issues, it takes a full hour for those issues to stop affecting your average speed estimates.

[Swimmer63]

Thanks guys.  I did not have time to mess anymore with it today.  I put the test blades back on proxy. 
I am wondering if using this cloud proxy method increases the bandwidth needed on my connection.  It seemed when I had 10 blades on the cloud proxy some of my miners slowed down.  Is that possible?

[eleuthria]

Thanks guys.  I did not have time to mess anymore with it today.  I put the test blades back on proxy. 
I am wondering if using this cloud proxy method increases the bandwidth needed on my connection.  It seemed when I had 10 blades on the cloud proxy some of my miners slowed down.  Is that possible?

I'm now remembering something Luke-Jr mentioned.  Blades do not multitask, so when they submit a share/complete a getwork request, they are not hashing until a response is received.  This would likely cause a somewhat noticeable impact on overall performance (few percent at minimum) since blades also send back every diff=1 result.

[dbbit]

So I was doing some calculations, and I don't have a way to make this service run much longer - it's now costing $300 per month and climbing. I will have to pull the plug.

As it stands now, I will have to take approximately 3% of blade computing power to break even. However, because of difficulty changes, in 1 month it will have to be 6% then a month after that 10% etc.  I don't think that's really worth it for anybody.


The thing that's a killer is the data transfer due to the GetWork protocol, which is several TB per month now.

I will post the setup instructions if you want to set up your own private Azure server for this. But as it is now, I'm planning to shut this service down on December 17th.

[Swimmer63]

You may not be interested in continuing but there is a paid service I saw on the forum. Guys charging something like 8.50 a month. I can't remember exactly what that gets you.
I'm just saying I think some are willing to pay for this.

I never got it to work well. Not your fault. My bandwidth I think.
But thanks so much for hosting this.

[Ally_Rob]

Do you have a donation address? Im willing to donate.

[jesse11]

Great work dbbit 
       First test: I like it!