Just use ckpool, that's what I'm doing
The point of mining solo directly on our node is it might be a little bit faster.
Any fraction of a seconds counts to get the edge.
ckpool is not the best with one block per 4 months and all the intermediate connections.
FutureBit told me solo mining was not ready for release yet.
Hopefully soon.
Solo mining to your own node will have the opposite effect. ckpool is in very well-connected datacentre, with, most likely max. 125 connections to other nodes in the entire world. ckpool can push the block to 125 connected nodes, and to the entire world, in a matter of few seconds. What is your home upload? Most likely in tens of Megabits or slower, no match for 1Gbit upload from datacentres. If your block is not propagated well, then 20ms delay you save by not connecting to ckpool means nothing if you propagate your block in 60 seconds and by then someone faster pushes hit block and yours become an orphan.