Currently, pool server extensions such as
long-polling provide static configuration information -- the long-polling URL -- via a special HTTP header. This is sub-optimal, because the long-polling URL is unlikely to change, yet many pool servers utilize the simple approach and send the same LP URL to each mining client, over and over again, wasting bandwidth.
A server list, used in mining client fail-over (something I have been pushing for), would be another example of static configuration information communicated from pool server to client.
Therefore, I began updating cpuminer to download $POOL_SERVER/config.json. This will look something like
{ "name" : "slush",
"description" : "slush's super-big pool",
"longpoll" : "/LP",
"ntime" : true,
"server_list" : [ { "url" : "http://srv1.net" }, { "url":"http://srv2.net" } ]
"xslush" : {
"my server-specific option #1" : "my value",
"my server-specific option #2" : "my value"
}
}
This should give pool servers a lot more flexibility in defining optional features and metadata, without needing to transmit that information redundantly in every single 'getwork' HTTP header.
