0.5% fee - Pools - Central Cavern Mining Co - Pools

[raskul]

Don't worry about bandwidth, i have plenty.
With regards the merge coins, i intend to (if we ever find blocks) share them with the miners on the node by way of giveaways etc.

We are a true 0% fee p2pool node and i intend on keeping it that way  

[Collider]

I was just wondering whether there would be a chance we would manage to get to 5TB of traffic on the upcoming Iceland node.

However, i think that is pretty unlikely even with full access of p2pool nodes and a big amount of bitcoin core traffic.

[raskul]

I was just wondering whether there would be a chance we would manage to get to 5TB of traffic on the upcoming Iceland node.

However, i think that is pretty unlikely even with full access of p2pool nodes and a big amount of bitcoin core traffic.

well, being as I am, i like to be safe rather than mess up, and since other miners are involved, once I get around to setting up the Iceland VPS, it'll be a substantial specification of server. While I'm still weighing things up.. it'll likely be monday next week before I can get around to it, as this week is very busy.

[Collider]

No stress.

As stated p2pool plus bitcoin core plus system uses only 2.5GB, so 4GB should be plenty

[CentralCavern]

The central cavern is >1% of the p2pool network,   yay!!

thanks to all cavern miners for joining us!

also, it's a joy to see donations coming in, I would like to reach out and say a BIG thank you to all who have donated BTC and all who mine on our node.
THANK YOU

http://gameshut.org/sites/default/files/Manic%20Miner%20-%20Loading.gif

[specialed101]

Hi,

    Your pool sounds like just what I've been looking for, but it seems like my miners are hitting a ceiling of a "difficulty" of 999.98. I am used to seeing that as more of a dynamic value. Is that hard-coded on your pool?

[murdof]

Hi,

    Your pool sounds like just what I've been looking for, but it seems like my miners are hitting a ceiling of a "difficulty" of 999.98. I am used to seeing that as more of a dynamic value. Is that hard-coded on your pool?

From P2Pool wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool
Q: Why does my miner say it has found a lot of shares but p2pool say I have only found a few?!
A: The real P2Pool difficulty is hundreds of times higher than on normal pools, but p2pool essentially lies to your miner and tells it to work on relatively easy shares so that it submits shares every few seconds instead of every few hours. P2Pool then ignores any submitted shares that don't match the real share difficulty. By doing this, P2Pool can more accurately report your local hash rate and you can see if you are having problems with too many stale shares quickly

I assume that's what you are asking?

[CentralCavern]

The Boss hath spoken ^

thank you Murdof. 

[jonnybravo0311]

Hi,

    Your pool sounds like just what I've been looking for, but it seems like my miners are hitting a ceiling of a "difficulty" of 999.98. I am used to seeing that as more of a dynamic value. Is that hard-coded on your pool?

The difficulty given out by a p2pool node is based on the total hash rate of the node.  It's designed that way so the node doesn't get flooded with shares that have no chance of actually being an accepted block solution.  There are two difficulty settings that are taken into account: pseudo and actual.  The pseudo difficulty is the difficulty of shares your miner submits.  The only real purpose of this is to make your graphs look pretty.  The actual difficulty determines the value of your share relative to other miners.  It is there to ensure that miners with high hash rates don't completely dominate the share chain.  Again, this is calculated by the node.  You can set your own values if you wish when you connect to the pool:

WALLETADDRESS/DIFF+PSEUDO

the /DIFF is the actual difficulty
the +PSEUDO is the pseudo difficulty

Let's give an example...

If you have a single S1 and you connect to a p2pool node that has a total hash rate of 100TH/s, you'll find that your S1 will very rarely find a share; however, when it does, that share will be worth more than "normal".  Conversely, if you have that same S1 on a p2pool node where it is the only miner, you'll find that your shares are worth the "normal" value.

Hope this helps.

[raskul]

Hi,

    Your pool sounds like just what I've been looking for, but it seems like my miners are hitting a ceiling of a "difficulty" of 999.98. I am used to seeing that as more of a dynamic value. Is that hard-coded on your pool?

The difficulty given out by a p2pool node is based on the total hash rate of the node.  It's designed that way so the node doesn't get flooded with shares that have no chance of actually being an accepted block solution.  There are two difficulty settings that are taken into account: pseudo and actual.  The pseudo difficulty is the difficulty of shares your miner submits.  The only real purpose of this is to make your graphs look pretty.  The actual difficulty determines the value of your share relative to other miners.  It is there to ensure that miners with high hash rates don't completely dominate the share chain.  Again, this is calculated by the node.  You can set your own values if you wish when you connect to the pool:

WALLETADDRESS/DIFF+PSEUDO

the /DIFF is the actual difficulty
the +PSEUDO is the pseudo difficulty

Let's give an example...

If you have a single S1 and you connect to a p2pool node that has a total hash rate of 100TH/s, you'll find that your S1 will very rarely find a share; however, when it does, that share will be worth more than "normal".  Conversely, if you have that same S1 on a p2pool node where it is the only miner, you'll find that your shares are worth the "normal" value.

Hope this helps.

this helps a lot, thank you jonnybravo - I had split my miners between addresses and was puzzled as to why my !XXL! singles weren't accepting shares.
now I know. i'll pop them back and just wait 

[specialed101]

Hi,

    Thanks for the quick response. I've only been messing with bitcoin mining for a few weeks now; so please excuse my ignorance. I had thought that it is the "difficulty" setting from the pool that is regulating how hard my miners are working. There have been some very brief peaks in the 1TH/s range for each miner, but they keep throttling down to the 800+ to 900+ GH/s range, underperforming by about 300 GH/s combined.

    This underperformance could impact my potential payout by about 10%, right? I have to admit that it's nice that they are running quite a bit cooler when I use your pool.   However, I would like to get them back up to 1TH/s each. Any ideas?

[jonnybravo0311]

Hi,

    Thanks for the quick response. I've only been messing with bitcoin mining for a few weeks now; so please excuse my ignorance. I had thought that it is the "difficulty" setting from the pool that is regulating how hard my miners are working. There have been some very brief peaks in the 1TH/s range for each miner, but they keep throttling down to the 800+ to 900+ GH/s range, underperforming by about 300 GH/s combined.

    This underperformance could impact my potential payout by about 10%, right? I have to admit that it's nice that they are running quite a bit cooler when I use your pool.   However, I would like to get them back up to 1TH/s each. Any ideas?

Because p2pool is a large network of individual nodes, it is the responsibility of each node to provide difficulty values.  For example, if I look at my own node right now, I see the following:

Code:

2014-06-19 14:10:17.971807 New work for worker! Difficulty: 468.830432 Share difficulty: 1567138.331514 Total block value: 25.064672 BTC including 325 transactions
2014-06-19 14:10:18.010919 New work for worker! Difficulty: 468.830432 Share difficulty: 1567138.331514 Total block value: 25.064672 BTC including 325 transactions
2014-06-19 14:10:18.049984 New work for worker! Difficulty: 64.000000 Share difficulty: 1567138.331514 Total block value: 25.064672 BTC including 325 transactions
2014-06-19 14:10:18.090329 New work for worker! Difficulty: 468.830432 Share difficulty: 1567138.331514 Total block value: 25.064672 BTC including 325 transactions

The three miners with the difficulty of 468.830432 are ones that are using the default node's difficulty settings.  The one with the 64.000000 difficulty has manually set the difficulty as I showed in my previous post.

As for why you're getting ~900GH/s as opposed to the 1TH/s you should be, are you by chance using an Antminer S2?  If yes, I recommend you point it to another pool.  The problem is in the custom version of cgminer that the S2 uses.  That version doesn't play well with p2pool and as a result you'll see that it will only average between 800 and 900 GH/s.  Kano has been working on creating a better driver for the S2, and to compile a new version of cgminer; however, due to the closed-source nature of Bitmain's software, he's been having a difficult time reverse engineering it successfully.

[jonnybravo0311]

By the way... just for fun I figured I'd see what kind of ping I'd get for this server from my location (Near Philadelphia in the US):

--- pool.centralcavern.uk ping statistics ---
80 packets transmitted, 79 packets received, 1.2% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 96.268/114.866/289.298/42.460 ms

Not terrible, but with an average of nearly 115ms, I'd see too many rejects.

[raskul]

small update: I have chosen the VPS companies I wish to use for Iceland and for the Middle East: waiting to hear back regarding pricing (and other things) and both (fingers crossed) should be active by Tuesday 24th June 2014.
 



EDIT: I'll see if I can get a USA server running at the same time.  

EDIT2: thanks again jonnybravo, very insightful, and good to know regarding the S2 rigs.

[specialed101]

Hi all,

    Thanks for the assistance with the difficulty settings. The tips were very helpful, and gave me some ideas on what else to look for.

    This http://forum.netcodepool.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=238 kind of went along with one suggestion, and sure enough the numbers have improved, including reducing the rejects.

[raskul]

update: Middle East node is currently downloading the Bitcoin blockchain  

Middle East node should be ready in t-48hours Tuesday 24 June 2014.

This will be a 1% fee node.
thank you.

[Collider]

Where is middle east node located?

[raskul]

Where is middle east node located?

It will be Isreal; however my first instance was created with too little memory (I was tired and missed points on the setup), so i've scratched it and will be installing

2CPU 4GB RAM and 50GB SSD with unlimited bandwidth.

It seems it will be monday next week before I get around to it, i'd hoped to have both Iceland and Middle East completed by end of play today, the errors set me back a bit.

[Acejam]

Where is middle east node located?

It will be Isreal; however my first instance was created with too little memory (I was tired and missed points on the setup), so i've scratched it and will be installing

2CPU 4GB RAM and 50GB SSD with unlimited bandwidth.

Are you merged mining? If so, you're going to need more RAM than that.

[raskul]

Where is middle east node located?

It will be Isreal; however my first instance was created with too little memory (I was tired and missed points on the setup), so i've scratched it and will be installing

2CPU 4GB RAM and 50GB SSD with unlimited bandwidth.

Are you merged mining? If so, you're going to need more RAM than that.

The EU node runs fine with the same specifications. However, these severs can easily be upgraded with any hardware needed.
I found the only merged coin which was a drain on resources, was Huntercoin; which has been removed from the node.