Network is only relevant to the pool when there's a Diff Change.
Of course the network causes the Diff Change.
But that's once every 2016 blocks (or about once every 2 weeks) - and was the main case in this particular question.
Otherwise, the hash rate of other pools and the network, between diff changes, has no expected effect on us.
Yes, I get that. Our hashes are dependent on difficulty. However, difficulty is adjusted to maintain block time. What is sole variable in block time? Hashes. So while that only happens every two weeks, you are still competing against the rest of the network to find a block faster.
Otherwise, what you are saying is that if every other pool in the world could close up shop for 2 weeks right after difficulty change, then we would not find any more blocks during that time than we would have expected to prior to the 2 week shutoff.
In that case it would also be even worse: the next diff change would be MUCH slower than 2 week - it's not based on time, it's based on 2016 blocks.
So it would have to wait until we found ... 2016 more blocks ... at the expected rate we find blocks - currently one every 2.12 days.
Ouch that would take a LONG time to get to the next diff change if we were the only ones mining Bitcoin ... ~4274 days to the next diff change
