Network usage and 3G access of mining rigs.

[Striker]

Hi,

I am up north in soviet canukistan, but I have a (decent) cell phone data plan/connection that I have used twice now as a backup: I just tethered my phone to a netbook that had booted an ubuntu live disk (over wifi, even, so extra hops because I was lazy) and then shared the connection out on my network. I have five machines, 10 workers, 3.8 GH total, at btcguild, and they rocked along fine while my ISP got around to eventually fixing it. Only ran for a couple hours, but they seemed to be operating at normal speeds: I don't know if stales might have been higher, though, too low of a sample size.

Now, as caveats, I am in a full coverage area, with a newish android phone, so I was running at .. I think it is HSDPA speed, 7.2 MB. (on rogers, if it's important) And, I have a 30 GB data plan, so I don't really have to care about the bits shuffled.

Soviet Canukistan ... I had to google for that lol
Before going forward with this subject, thanks for the efforts and info on both you and also deslok. Your info is very useful for many people in this forum.

Like I previously mentioned, I think that 3G is obviously usable and possible to deploy, and my intention was to have 20 X 6990's all crunching day and night, so with such a system I think it is possible to operate on a 3G+ 7.2Mbps download and 1.4Mbps upload.
About 14GH/s ... 

As the system is always on the same place one can optimize signal reception.

And my worries where not about tethering connections but rather possible maximum bandwidth problems.
The only problem with tethering would be likely some configuration problems on the network chain of devices.

Also the Major problem with 3G/wireless networks is the bigger delays the connection has to sustain and even more importantly ... the Availability of the bandwidth.
Even if I go for the 7.2/1.4 Mbps plan which costs 30euros/Month with Vodafone the problem remains the same ... is the 3G/wireless Tower loaded ?

If the area where the system is installed is very busy with communications, even voice calls, then the available bandwidth will no doubt be decreased ...
So this is indeed a problem that can cause substantial connectivity downgrade.
This is why wireless bandwidth are known to be of much less "quality"...
Other then that wireless could also be less reliable ...

About Soviet Canukistan that is a Great place to mine! In all meanings of the word
Does anyone there rent space for this purpose ? Like ... very low cost ... backyard space...
You see: you guys have great low temperature almost all year long (depending on location of Course ...Canada is a really big place.) and also ... low power costs!
That is perfect for mining !


Regards.

 

[deslok]

Keep in mind the limitations if a hotspot, my phone claims support for 8 but even my actual router struggles with more than six wireless devices.

[Striker]

Hi,

Keep in mind the limitations if a hotspot, my phone claims support for 8 but even my actual router struggles with more than six wireless devices.

Yes.
My idea is not to use wifi.
I will simply connect a usb 3G modem to a Linux PC which will act as the main computer and Router/firewall of the network of 5 PC's.
Each will have 4 6990's.

So the idea is to have all those 5 PC's running and the network access will be the 3G card.
They will all be connected to a Ethernet switch.
In this manner there is no wifi going on.
The only option to use wifi would be If the guys where I am placing the computers would let me use their wifi ... but has previously mentioned I really really doubt it.
If that was the case every single PC would connect trough the wifi wap.

Regards.

[rampone]

Striker, are you in Portugal? The tariff option of Vodafone smell like it.

Be sure to handle reconnections well, like restarting the connections when ping is lost and restarting miners if they hang up somehow.

[Striker]

Hi,

Striker, are you in Portugal? The tariff option of Vodafone smell like it.

Be sure to handle reconnections well, like restarting the connections when ping is lost and restarting miners if they hang up somehow.

Yup, you're right, and the service would be Vodafone Best Net Max (post payed) ... great coverage all over by the way... even in the typical small little villages.
http://www.vodafone.pt/main/Particulares/BandaLargaMovel/blm_pospaga/blm_pospaga_tarifario.htm

I must use a remote location for obvious electricity price reasons ...

It is only affordable/profitable if one uses industrial electricity price rates.
There is also the VAT increase over the electric bill problem next January. Banks made mistakes and now everyone has to pay for it ! BIG F#CK !
This means that for all due purposes residential electric price will be around 0.20->0.22euro/ KWH instead of the current 0.16euro/KWH.

Thanks for the warnings, I actually tested at work a 7.2Mbps card with mtr and with an the signal strength was not that good (from my mobile Phone I could see only three bars on 3G connection (out of 6 possible) ). It actually was a very good quality connection! And it was a wifi Hotspot device from vodafone ... those that are setup right away.
Pretty cool actually, I am confident about the 3G operation.
The only problem is really _at the site_ ... Conditions vary greatly depending on traffic on the antenna, reception conditions etc ...

About the monitoring of the rigs and Software ... yeah that is also another Very important set of scripts and processes ... From the miners to temperature to network etc ...
I am still in a process of making the right setup in a single PC at home with just one card in order to prepare for "The Real Deal"

Thanks for the tip anyway.

Regards.

[bulanula]

Sorry to sound negative but if you are considering this big kind of setup right now, you are setting up for failure. At current price / difficulty, mining is at lowest ever profitability and the price could tank anytime.

I already regret my decision to invest in mining. Buyer beware !

[rearwheels]

Just to share, I'm using 3G connection with this:
http://www.aztech.com/prod_3g_hw550.html

I currently have 3 rigs putting out about 4Ghs via this 3G router.

I have some scripts that report the temperature to my webserver (public IP) every 10mins.

For remote control, I start a reverse tunnel on the rigs that ssh to my webserver. So I can ssh to my webserver from anywhere, and tunnel back to the rigs.

Hope this is useful.

regards,
Koo

[Striker]

Hi,

Sorry to sound negative but if you are considering this big kind of setup right now, you are setting up for failure. At current price / difficulty, mining is at lowest ever profitability and the price could tank anytime.

I already regret my decision to invest in mining. Buyer beware !

Just to clear everyone about my investment.
I actually do know how to check for profitability on any investment. Thanks for the heads up anyway.

But my particular situation is maybe quite different from others: It is all about How everyone accounts for the investment.

In my case the hardware will be registered to my company, so in 3 years it is Fully Deductible on taxes.
Either the hardware goes to bitcoin mining or to the taxes that are spend by the State ... what do you think I will be choosing.
Also as stated earlier as long as I pay for the electricity ... No Problem, there is always return.
So everyone's situation is different in this regard.
Also you bet on bitcoins being low all the time, I bet they will go up!

Regards.

[Striker]

Hi,

Just to share, I'm using 3G connection with this:
http://www.aztech.com/prod_3g_hw550.html

I currently have 3 rigs putting out about 4Ghs via this 3G router.

I have some scripts that report the temperature to my webserver (public IP) every 10mins.

For remote control, I start a reverse tunnel on the rigs that ssh to my webserver. So I can ssh to my webserver from anywhere, and tunnel back to the rigs.

Hope this is useful.

regards,
Koo

Great feedback!
Thanks for the info !

I also had the idea of setting a ssh tunnel. I also some web servers on datacenters ... But actually you can monitor everything simply exchanging on your local lan data to a file from all your rigs. Actually that is very very easy ... use ftp, sftp, shared nfs folder ... whatever.
Then on the Master rig (the one that acts as a router ) serving as gateway for the lan, the one with the USB 3G modem, start postfix and simply install the Mail program ...

Want to send email every ... say 30 minutes ... on how everything is going ... make all pc's script output on the shared dir their status/temps/whatever and then simply:

run a script to email the report like this:

#bash\: mail -s “Hello world this is Bitcoin mining Rigs report ” youremail@yourdomain.com < /home/<user>/application.log


you can also just use :

#bash\: mail -s “Hello world” youremail@yourdomain.com 

to write the message subject or:

#bash\: echo “This will go into the body of the mail.” | mail -s “Hello world” youremail@yourdomain.com

Simple, effective.

A cron job can run in all PC's and also a script can be made in order to evaluate if everything is OK according to your parameters ... then maybe no eamil is needed to be sent ... or just an email saying ... "OK Mining RIGS RULE!!! " 


Regards.

[rearwheels]

I try not to have a "manager node", in case that is a single point of failure.

I use a lazy solution on all the rigs, this script runs via crontab:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
URL="http://server/mining/temp.php?id="`hostname`

TEMPS=`export DISPLAY=:0;sudo aticonfig --odgt --adapter=all | grep Temperature| awk '{ print $5 }'| sed 's/^/\&temp[]=/g' | sed -e :a -e '$!N; s/\n//; ta'`

wget -O /dev/null $URL$TEMPS

On the server, temp.php

Code:

  $server = $_GET['id'];
  $temp = $_GET['temp'];
  $i = 0;
  foreach ($temp as $t)
  {
    //write to log file/DB
  }

[kirax]

I try not to have a "manager node", in case that is a single point of failure.

I use a lazy solution on all the rigs, this script runs via crontab:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
URL="http://server/mining/temp.php?id="`hostname`

TEMPS=`export DISPLAY=:0;sudo aticonfig --odgt --adapter=all | grep Temperature| awk '{ print $5 }'| sed 's/^/\&temp[]=/g' | sed -e :a -e '$!N; s/\n//; ta'`

wget -O /dev/null $URL$TEMPS

On the server, temp.php

Code:

  $server = $_GET['id'];
  $temp = $_GET['temp'];
  $i = 0;
  foreach ($temp as $t)
  {
    //write to log file/DB
  }

The lazier yet answer is BAMT, I used to have logs running, going to a single node, etc, but now I just run mgpumon and everything is there :p

[jago25_98]

I think this is worth a bump since litecoin. I wonder what the bandwidth of that is.

I was kind of hoping it might be possible to reduce the bandwidth somehow. I wonder if a distributed system might be more efficient (distcc is the analogy). 10mb is a lot to my mind, I remember things in terms of dialup.

I see the key thing is to have a quick response to the network when a block is found. Does this mean that satelite connections are not feasible...

my situation is that bandwith is extremely limited but could be opened if a block is found. I solo mine.

But as I understand, you have to download a new block whenever someone else finds the current one right? ...and since that happens often it means you can't just download a load of work to work on offline and then reply only when you want to claim a block?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I think this is worth a bump since litecoin. I wonder what the bandwidth of that is.   I was kind of hoping it might be possible to reduce the bandwidth somehow. I wonder if a distributed system might be more efficient (distcc is the analogy). 10mb is a lot to my mind, I remember things in terms of dialup.

It would be possible to make a pool more bandwidth efficient.  NtimeRolling reducing number of getworks that are necessary.  Most pools use 1 difficulty shares for tracking work but that is a somewhat arbitrary choice.  A pool could use 10 difficulty shares to reduce the number of shares submitted by a miner by a factor of 10.  Pools could also only change transactions in block (queue up new transactions) periodically to reduce the number of discrete block headers. 

All those combined could significantly reduce the amount of communicaiton between the pool and clients.  A guestimate is that you could see a 90% reduction in bandwidth by queuing transactions for up to 1 minute, using large difficulty shares, and a large NTimeRolling value. 

I see the key thing is to have a quick response to the network when a block is found. Does this mean that satelite connections are not feasible...

  Quick is all relative.  With sat you likely will have a higher stale rate (as would anyone with high latency connection) but you still could mine.

But as I understand, you have to download a new block whenever someone else finds the current one right? ...and since that happens often it means you can't just download a load of work to work on offline and then reply only when you want to claim a block?

Correct.  You need to be "aware" (via mining pool or in case of solo mining via bitcoind) that a block is found so you can start work on the new block.