Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions
It's still the same as mentioned above:
"New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.232827 Share difficulty: 5.000000 Total block value: 53.123000 LTC including 45 transactions" This is using: Usrnme/5+5
P2pool version is: 11.3 (I tried 11.4, that seemed to decrease my share rate further) Cgminer version: 3.1.0.
I'm receiving payouts. The odd behavior is receiving consistent share/payout per block of .45 LTC for 12+ hours, then it drops to .10 for another 12 + hours. This happens when the p2pool node has been operating fine, along with all the miners connected. Smooth & even hashrates. The overall pool hashrate has a mean score of 580MH/s. I would anticipate a much lower payout if the pool hashrate jumped to 1,200MH/s, but it stays within 100-150+- MH/s variance of the mean score. My efficiency is normally between 110%-120%.
Thank you for the reply.
Thanks - I think this shows what's wrong:
1) your +5 difficulty is way to high so p2pool has already reduced it down to .232 (otherwise it would get no statistics)
2) the /5 difficulty is causing 200% higher variance than is typical. The payouts change so much because you are only submitting a rare high difficulty share instead of frequent low difficulty shares. p2pool is not a PPS payout system, but a PPLNS. When you find a share, you will get paid out every time p2pool finds a block for some period of time. If you find shares infrequently, there will be much variance. With a /5 difficulty, you'll find shares infrequently.
Both of those settings won't affect your expected or average payout, just change the variance and frequency of payouts.
i'd try one of these two:
1) don't use /difficulty+difficulty at all and let p2pool tune it for you (especially good if you're a small miner)
2) If you're a bigger miner and want to tune your difficulty, perhaps trying /2+.0002 as a starting point and tune as you see fit. If you're payout variance is too high, get rid of the /2. If you're statistics reporting to p2pool is too much (crashing the server) then increase +.0002 to something higher (or lower if you want more accurate statistics)