I have read in some posts that there is quite a bit of time wasted between when you point your miners to the Kano pool and when they actually begin mining. Is this true? If so why is that?
Nope - consider them false statements by whoever is making them, or someone with tiny miners complaining about pointing them at a normal pool.
You see your shares arriving on the workers page immediately - there's no delay showing shares arriving at the pool.
Of course if you point a tiny 2GHs miner at the pool it will take it, on average, 2hrs 16minutes to find it's first share ...
An S3 which is about 440GHs, would of course take, on average, about 37 seconds to find it's first share.
An S5 which is about 1100GHs, would take, on average, about 15 seconds to find it's first share.
An S7 which is about 4800GHs, would take, on average, about 3.4 seconds to find it's first share.
The point of these numbers is that the starting diff is (currently) set at 4098.
It's set at that for a reason - it's easy to disrupt (or even effectively shut down) a pool that has a low starting diff or even allows a low diff when mining ... if you understand how that works - yes even antpool
I wont explain how to do it, but it is simple enough on any pool.
The settings I use here work fine with current hardware and previous generation hardware.
If you use older hardware it's a bit longer to find your first share, or if you use tiny USBs then you'll find they take a long while to find shares.
However, it's not wasted time, it's simply that shares are worth more at 4098 diff, than at 1 diff, of course, so you'll get them at a rate that is appropriate for your hardware.
Oddly enough, we don't reward a 2GHs miner the same as a 14THs miner