A theoretical limit on a single user's HR for the pool

A question for Chris and Steve (but open to everyone):

I've been reviewing and attempting to plan out a major hashing setup. I was wondering if there is a theoretical limit on what a single user can contribute, in total hash rate, to the pool, before it would be considered overwhelming or too much?

While a GH/s setup is within my reach, I was also investigating single and dual rack setups that may have the potential of reaching upwards of 20GH/s fully populated.

Just more of a curiosity at this point than a realistic possibility, but figured I'd pose the question.

There isn't any limit to what a single user can contribute. In essence, there would be no difference between you sending 10 GH/s and 100 other miners sending a total of 10 GH/s. However, there is a limit to what a single worker can contribute. You shouldn't aggregate your miners into one 10 GH/s worker because you would just be assigned Litecoin all the time. The more workers you can split your hashrate into, the more optimally we can allocate the resources onto the smaller, more profitable coin networks, improving profitability.

If you're planning on doing a major increase in hashrate, just give me a heads-up beforehand. We're not sure exactly how much load the database can handle before we start having perpetual delays inserting shares. We've planned for a gradual increase in hashrate and have tested for at least 30 GH/s at the moment, but beyond that we don't know exactly what will happen. We wouldn't want anyone to leave the pool because we can't handle the load. I would run simulations of the load in preparation so that we can resolve any problems that would appear with the higher hashrate.

Another thought

The more miners that join coin-switching pools (not just ours), the more the overall profitability of coin-switching pools drops to approach that of Litecoin. It's still always mathematically more profitable to be on a coin-switching pool than a straight Litecoin pool, but historically, the largest miners have used straight Litecoin because the profitability advantage of coin-switching a huge group of miners was less than the risk of the coin-switching pool cheating them or otherwise being unreliable. I think the market has matured though and this unreliability is no longer an issue.

Thanks for the info. I'll keep you on the up and up as/if plans turn closer into reality.

Unless you have free electric I can't imagine why you would be setting up a huge farm. It is a money losing venture.

I have friends and colleagues in the data center industry that pay bulk rates for their power, not per kWh, and hence, the power would be covered in the cost of the hosted racks.

There's good deals on power if you look in the right places.

If you've got any names of those right places, please feel free to share.