I stopped mining awhile ago, but I've left my p2pool node up. It's averaged 36 peers in the last year and it's bitcoind node is well connected. It has a high speed internet connection and has had excellent uptime.
Is a node like mine actually helpful for p2pool? I'm assuming that having a well connected node is good for spreading transactions and protecting p2pool from some kind of network attack. Am I right, or is a non-mining node not helpful? It's just a git pull and a restart ever now and then, so it's not much effort.
If a non-mining node is helpful, is there anything else I can do to make it more useful? Maybe set the max connections to something a lot higher so the pool sees more transactions? I'm just guessing.