I searched for the terms balance, balancing, load balancing, etc before coming and bugging you guys about something I can see you have discussed many times.
I've noticed so many people complaining about variance seemingly more lately. Some of us do not want to mine at certain pools, ever, from more of a moral perspective, but it seems everyone wants the same thing, which is to see those blocks popping.
I have felt like for many it isn't the payout amounts either, it is the fact that they know where they are mining are hitting blocks!
Anyway, that is not what my question is about, I am rambling as usual
I took an S3 and began playing with load balancing across 3 pools. This is the maximum number of pools which may be entered via the user interface in an S3. (I am not sure if more may be entered by editing a file on the S3. I kept my initial test in a "stock" format, but I am not afraid to jump in and play with any settings.)
I actually have the setting set to Load balancing. I will refrain from using pool names until I am more familiar and more confident in using this option in case I am doing something incorrectly and it reflects on the pool. I will use Pool A, B, and C
1. My first question is extremely general and may be based on known facts, your personal opinions, or general experience. Are there any drawbacks to using load balancing? Am I losing 'work', 'hash', 'time' or are there any negative connotations? (Outside the fact all of my hashrate is not pointed at CK and Kano's pools which is never a good thing
)2. Vardiff - So I am going to assume like it would be for any miner vardiff comes into play if implemented and configured correctly on the pool side and I configure any options available to me.
Pool A originally showed 1.02k. I changed the password field to be d=256 and the difficulty worked its way down to 256. I have now changed it to d=46 and will report on what if anything changes from there. I understand many pools do have minimum difficulty amounts, some have specific ports setup for certain difficulties, etc.
Pool side hashrate is shown: 146.6
Pool B has varied. It showed 70, 46, and at the moment is displaying 37. I am assuming vardiff is working on this pool as designed. I do not have a minimum difficulty value set on the pool side configuration option.
Pool side hashrate is shown: 63.73
Pool C has shown 256 consistently since the miner connected. I have the pool side set at 0, which I understand to mean the pool calculates my difficulty based on the number of shares submitted in X amount of time.
Pool side hashrate is shown: 126.91
I am still trying to learn which statistics are important when viewing any miner stat page. As much reading as I have done on the subject you would think I would be a pro, and with my real-world mini-farm I would be able to tell at a glance if something is underperforming but that is not true, yet. As you will see The overall hashrate is about right for a default S3
Miner 'version' information, firmware, etc. I keep the 10-24 version so I may play with the vcore to overclock or underclock in all of th S3s. (I saw the pencil mod thread a few days ago for the S3 and it is def on my todo list along with manually updating CGminer.
You can see my current stats in this image:
My pool side hashrates have probably not rolled up yet? I'm assuming the total pool side hashrates will become much closer to my device hashrate over the next few hours.
My primary goal is to reduce variance by mining to three of my favorite pools.
My secondary goal is to learn more about the individual statistics, what they mean and how I may apply, change, tweak any settings for a more efficient setup.
I am looking for any caveats, issues, and in general opinions from this community, particularly people who have used balancing and load balancing who I may learn from.
Again, I think I have read everything I can find regarding these things, but feel free to point me to existing information as it is greatly appreciated.
I would appreciate any general comments as well. Point me towards updating CG miner, use this application to remotely monitor everything, do this or that to make things more secure and reliable, reboot every X hours to maintain X. I am always eager to learn, be it teaching me to fish, or feeding me the fish, and I always do my best to pay it forward.
Thank you for your time.