if you had 200 GH/s which is the most profitable pool?

[Luke-Jr]

Nonsense

P2pool has the variance of a 300GH/s pool, that means like 1 block every 6 hours

Eligius is 350GH/s, so it's pretty much the same thing

p2pool is PPLNS (high variance). Eligius is SMPPS (low variance).

[DeathAndTaxes]

Nonsense

P2pool has the variance of a 300GH/s pool, that means like 1 block every 6 hours

Eligius is 350GH/s, so it's pretty much the same thing

p2pool is PPLNS (high variance). Eligius is SMPPS (low variance).

Once again nonsense.  SMPPS has low (essentially no) variance in rate funds are EARNED (similar to PPS) but unlike PPS it has high variance in the rate that funds are PAID.    Most miners care about the variance in their payments and SMPPS provides no advantage there.

Lastly even if PPLNS had higher variance your claim that it is "similar to solo mining" is just pure biased FUD.  I mean it is crap Luke. No way around that.

A miner with 1 GH/s of hashing power has the same variance solo mining or using p2pool?  Really that is the garbage claim you are putting your name on?

On edit: removed profanity. 

[Luke-Jr]

Nonsense

P2pool has the variance of a 300GH/s pool, that means like 1 block every 6 hours

Eligius is 350GH/s, so it's pretty much the same thing

p2pool is PPLNS (high variance). Eligius is SMPPS (low variance).

Once again nonsense.  SMPPS has low (essentially no) variance in rate funds are EARNED (similar to PPS) but unlike PPS it has high variance in the rate that funds are PAID. 

Most miners care about the variance in their payments and there is no difference between the two. 

Lastly even if PPLNS had higher variance your claim that it is similar to solo mining is just pure biased FUD.  I mean it is shit Luke.

A miner with 1 GH/s of hashing power has the same variance solo mining or using p2pool?  Really that is the fucked up claim you are putting your name on?

Sorry you don't understand, but it really doesn't justify the profanity.

[organofcorti]

most important aspect is maximizing profit over say a 6 month period.  during that period, i imagine variance would average out right?

Well your power bills comes once a month.  A very bad streak (1 in 200 chance) could put you  -30% compared to expected over 30 days.  Using p2pool is a no brainer.  100% of transaciton fees, no pool fees, a good chunk of the subsidies, and your variance would be based on ~400GH/s instead of 200 GH/s.

Are you sure you're right there, D&T? Seems a little high to me. How'd you calculate it?

[ZPK]

go us ... pool.itzod.ru .... we unlucky and we need power ( no fee....RSMPPS...
http://pool.itzod.ru/

[triplehelix]

guys, again, i am not currently in possession of 200 GH/s.  i do hope to accumulate it over the short to mid term (am currently in research mode, not in purchasing mode), but i'm more interested in the academic comparison of solo vs pool, or p2p vs "normal" pool, at that hashrate, so i can plan accordingly.

[Luke-Jr]

p2p vs "normal" pool

There is no significant difference here. The difference lies in who creates the blocks: miner or pool. If the pool makes the blocks, the miner is blind and powerless over what goes into them. If the miner makes the blocks, it restores the integrity we had with solo mining. To date, there are 3 pools which support it: BitPenny was the first to move this to the "miner makes blocks" design, with a proprietary Bitcoin-based protocol; p2pool was the second, with yet another different proprietary protocol; for Eligius, I chose to adopt the new "getmemorypool" JSON-RPC method and make it a standard capable of general mining use.

[organofcorti]

In the short term there is variance same as any other pool.

p2pool variance is almost like solo mining. Eligius has almost no variance.

Variance in time to maturity is not dissimilar to variance in payout. In both cases you do not earn what you expect today; in both cases you hope that in the long term your actual payout will converge with your expected payout. In the long term variance in time to maturity will cause some amount will almost certainly be owing (although minimal as a percentage of overall earnings); however variance in payout is as likely leave you slightly ahead as behind.

Variance in time to maturity is more likely to leave a miner out of pocket than payout variance, for the same amount of variance. I understand you're saying variance is higher at a p2pool, but variance in payout can be more than expected - this doesn't happen with variance in your pool.

Unless there's something I missed?

[cuz0882]

If I had that many cards I would join a pool that sends a text message when a miner is down.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If I had that many cards I would join a pool that sends a text message when a miner is down.

What if someone offered a service like that for p2pool (or any pool) and it cost say 1 bitcent per text?  Would you be interested in paying?  What if it also could provide notification on low hashrate, excessive stales, pool down/pool switched, block found, BTC paid, etc?

[Luke-Jr]

If I had that many cards I would join a pool that sends a text message when a miner is down.

This is probably the best suggestion yet.

[cuz0882]

If I had that many cards I would join a pool that sends a text message when a miner is down.

What if someone offered a service like that for p2pool (or any pool) and it cost say 1 bitcent per text?  Would you be interested in paying?  What if it also could provide notification on low hashrate, excessive stales, pool down/pool switched, block found, BTC paid, etc?

I'm sure some people would. Eclipse has free texting, merged mining and dgm. Some pools have better variance but I'm not sure its worth paying for in the long run. Slush's pool would be more tempting with that feature though.

[deepceleron]

Nobody has the correct answer, which is to start your own pool.

Pools with no hashrate have a hard time launching. If you start a pool with 200GHash/s on day one, you are golden. Then the transactions fees, mining fees, and donations you earn are just gravy. Why pay fees when you can earn fees!

[Chlorine]

Nobody has the correct answer, which is to start your own pool.

After all, running your own pool doesn't cost you any additional time! ;-)

[cuz0882]

Those 120% pools often end up paying you nothing and running off with your money. Does not seem like a good risk vs reward.

How about this Death&T.
If I put my preferred pool in the cgminer config nineteen times and put down a pool with texting like eclipse once. Then set cgminer to balance, only about 5% of the shares would go to them. SMS should still work fine if a miner is shut down. I've thought about trying it, I'm not sure if it would lower the performance though.

[DeathAndTaxes]

IIRC Balancing option in cgminer is non-optimal.  Something to do with way it handles LP across multiple pools.  I could be wrong but it is late and I never use balancing option so that is my story and I am sticking with it.

This applies to load balance only not failover.

[cuz0882]

Maybe rotation would do the same thing. I tried out the balance method a little while. Cgminer seems to think my hash-rate increased by 20mh, could be a glitch in the way its getting that number though.

Anyone know how much more p2pool gives you vs a free pool?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Anyone know how much more p2pool gives you vs a free pool?

It depends.  Donations are about ~0.5% but that varies a lot and there is no guarantee of donations in the future.  The p2pool network averages about a 8% internal stale rate.  If hypothetically you internal stale rate was 0% you would earn ~108% of PPS.  That likely is impossible but an internal state rate of 5% (103% PPS) is possible.

[awigaxeh-443]

what kind of weird person would join a pool versus solo?

[DeathAndTaxes]

what kind of weird person would join a pool versus solo?

what kind of weird person solos when there are 0% fee pools?

Looking at your short post history I would guess a troll?