I encountered similar issues with p2pool and my setup after the difficulty kept on rising.
I quote below the final post by me on this topic, which should summise my conclusions.
Taken from
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg3414073#msg3414073 page 342
After around 1 week of solid processing at 10 gh/s via p2pool network I received 0.00337845 BTC; after missing 16 block payouts in a row.
I'm sorry to say this can't be giving me my fair share for my work done on the p2pool network so I have moved off it.
You may have something wrong with your miner setup, or with the pool you're using - how many p2pool 'shares' did you submit ?
There is some element of 'randomness' - but a week of 15Gh/s has found 17 P2Pool-type 'shares' and apart from the 2 days when that miner had found no p2pool-shares, I've been paid on every block found.
Thanks for all the responses. It's good to get feed back.
My miner setup was working perfect before the difficulty rose to 268 m. I was running my own p2pool client, efficiently was near perfect, stall rate was virtually zero, DOA was zero. I was able to find a share in nearly every block and got paid out nearly every time. I think I missed two payouts in about twenty, but I hadn't found a share so I knew that was correct too.
As soon as the difficulty rose to 268 m without anything changing at my side (after three months working perfectly) I stopped receiving payouts. After a week I ended up with one pay out of a very low amount as previously wrote in a previous post, but p2pool has paid out about 17 times. I had noticed that I couldn't get a successful share before the pool solved a block and when I did manage to get two , one was orphaned. That's when I got my only payout in a week.
Summery....
After a week of running at 268 m I have to say p2pool did not work for my 10 gh processing.
It had worked perfectly below 268m difficulty, my payouts were nearly ever time and perfect amounts as I calculated from inputting numbers into online calculators.
The problem seems to me that my 10 gh can't get a share fast enough for the network, but although I was informed when I did get a share I would get my fair share I clearly didn't.
Also I have to add, at the same time I had another 10 gh in another pool, not p2pool, and this paid what I would have expected, over the same time period.
I end by saying I believe in the p2pool idea, and I thank the coders, but I also believe as the difficulty rises more low hashing users may have to leave p2pool network due to the issues I have mentioned.
