Quote from: smooth on January 16, 2014, 07:49:17 PM

Quote from: mdude77 on January 16, 2014, 10:17:32 AM

On average it'll take you about 3 days to find a share at current sharechain difficulty (770k). That means there will be dry periods much longer, and probably some days it's shorter.

How about you drop the obvious bias? "Will" be dry periods, and "probably" some days its shorter? Seriously?

There WILL be longer dry periods and there WILL be shorter dry periods. That is the nature of variance. But when your total hash rate translates to $2/day the absolute variance will not be much. You will NEVER underperform by more than $2/day.

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Another factor regularly overlooked with p2pool is the high reject rate. I know I was extremely disappointed when those 3 or 4 days would go by and I'd finally get that cherished share ... only to have it rejected.

If you have a "high" reject rate then something is malfunctioning or misconfigured. A few percent or so rejects is normal and anything up to about 10% probably does not hurt your earnings relative to another pool.

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I tend to think you won't be getting $5 or $10 every few days with 12gh/s.

Then you would be wrong. If your expected earnings are $2/day and you have multiple days of getting $0 then you WILL also have days of getting $6 or more. Mathematical certainty.

Over periods of weeks you will very likely earn more than regular pools even with 12 GH. If you want to earn less, go right ahead, but stop spreading biased misinformation.

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You're right, I think there was some bias in there. I'm not new to p2pool, nor new to mining. I've always been a small miner in p2pool, and the huge variance I experience hurts. And the 16% stale rate, on average, doesn't help matters.

I thought a bit about why I stay away from p2pool and why I suggest other "small" miners do the same.

It's the variance and the continued massive increases in difficulty.

Over the roughly 2 week period between BTC difficulty increases, if you average a share every 3 days, that means there will be times when it's longer, and there will be times that it's shorter. Because of stale shares, there will be more longer periods than there will be shorter periods. If BTC difficulty never increased, it would even out in the end compared to everyone else in p2pool.

The rub is in the difficulty increase. In that 2 week period I should get 4 shares on average, assuming share difficulty doesn't increase. But it is... so if I luck out and get 4 shares, or more, then great. But if I don't, I will do better on a standard pool with little variance (like BTC Guild).

Maybe my math is wrong. The resident math expert will likely chime in here correcting me if I'm off. It may just be a feeling. Regardless, it seems to me because of the endless drastic difficulty increases, when I come out behind in that difficulty period, I will never catch up in the next difficulty period. And there will be times when I come out behind... so therefore I'm better off in a standard pool.

Again, this applies to small miners. With share difficulty approaching 1m, I can't imagine pointing my measly 38 gh/s at p2pool. The variance would be awful, and before I know it, the BTC difficulty will increase again.

M