Re: A Complete Guide to P2Pool - Merged Mining (BTC/NMC/DVC/IXC/I0C) plus LTC, Linux
I have received a whole lot of nothing in my merged mining wallets. I know merged mining is more like Solo mining with P2Pool, but with this somewhat middling hashpower I would have expected to have gotten something within this timeframe. So do I have something setup wrong or is the probability really that bad with around a 1TH of power? Even Namecoin has only the few bits I got from failover to BTCGuild and nothing from my merged p2pool node even after being active for over 3 months.
When I did the math the other day, I think Namecoin merge mining with my 180GH miner on my Un node is about 2 years average time to find a namecoin block. I'd need to be more around 10 TH to get blocks on a regular enough basis to consider that a legitimate source of income to pay for the pool overhead.
It'd be nice if there was a namecoin p2pool network, and p2pool could merge mine off of that extra p2pool network somehow.
With merge mining BTC you are pretty much solo mining the other coins - it's pot luck. Unless you have insane hashing power like a large pool you're relying on luck, basically. Having said that, I got 3 I0C yesterday - first payment in over a month with that coin!! 
merged mining in p2pool node is wast of resources. latency will go higher and memory usage is very high too. my experience says that it is contra productive to mine them.
when i tested to mine merged coins in my node, efficiency of nod was much lower. most of nodes make merged mining to cover costs, but usually it is not worth it. since i don't have merced coins in my node it functions perfect and payouts are much better than with merged mining.
better set 1% of fee on your public node to cover your costs instead of mining hidden merged coins. if somebody is mining in your node without merged mining, he gets better payouts with 1% of fee than 0% fee and merged mining.
i agree with you , except in the case of namecoins (err, well, if you have a "decent" speed, anyway... which I'd say would be about a 1 in 200 chance per day of finding a namecoin, one block of namecoins is worth around $200 at current prices)