Not intending to overload the pool, but a good shot at a block
My S3 currently is hunting for that, letting that little squirrel find the nut =) Ive worked out with my KNC scrypt units I can easily have more than half a 25 BTC block in a year, plus the BTC I already bought, so it doesn't make sense to gamble it away on the chance that I 'might' but I still want this block to manifest and my bitcoin rigs are for fun, so I might as well solo with them
Now and again I threw the odd rental, but over a year lost 2 BTC worth so decided best not to try it again for a while. Add insult to that my best share came from my S3. My solo S3 comes on during the cheap electricity night hours.
My KNC scrypt units total are making me 1.4 BTC a month at the current scrypt difficulty directly in BTC on nicehash, for 0.2 BTC electricity cost. It makes sense to keep going with this and be patient. I plan after the S7 prices have crashed to put a couple of them in my friends student dorm for the best shot at solo on this pool possible as the power will be free at that point, or see what the 14nm equipment has to offer.
Any BITCOIN mining direct that I do will be solo here, unless there is a really good hardware deal from a reputable source that will make real money, the problem is the difficulty jumps that bitcoin has, scrypt difficulty jumps are not anywhere near as extreme and levels out, and my payouts are in BTC.
But even to long term soloers solo mining here, I would always have your own node (if you have one) as the FINAL failover. If all major pools ended up DDoSed it would enable transactions to get propagated, this pool makes a great second failover if you like pool mining or primary solo node as I trust this not to orphan my block more than my own bitcoind. But having your own node even if you pool and solo as the final backup is something I hope most miners do.
It is possible to overload a pool that is improperly set up or has poor network infrastructure or has a bad daemon, my S3 overloaded and crashed the SHT coin daemon on that pool, the difficulty hasn't even reached 1 and I threw 500GH at it for shits and giggles.
Personally I think not only can this pool handle a high hashrate, it makes a good home for the older, low powered miners that otherwise are worthless now. Gotta be in it to win it...
