Understand the fundamentals
Two views of the same work path
Local hashrate is the miner’s own report of the calculations happening inside it. The pool makes a separate estimate from the shares it receives and accepts. A share is a result the miner sends to the pool to show it has been doing work. The two numbers come from different places. They use different methods and average over different lengths of time. Normally they roughly follow each other, but they do not have to match exactly at every moment.
Several things can pull the two numbers apart. The network connection may drop. Work may be credited to the wrong worker, the label the pool uses to track a machine or group of machines. Some shares arrive too late to count. These are called stale shares. The pool may also reject shares for other reasons. Over short periods, random chance also moves the pool’s estimate up and down. The comparison only helps once you know the right account, worker and time period.
See how it works
Use windows rather than isolated snapshots
Every average covers a stretch of time, called its window. Right after startup, it is easy to make a mistake. You might compare a short local average with a pool average that still includes the earlier downtime. The gap then comes partly from the different windows, not only from how the miner runs now. A pool’s longer average can also take time to show that the miner has recovered.
Record the start and end time of your comparison and the miner’s startup time. Also record the active profile and the averaging window the pool shows. Use the pool’s documentation to understand how it calculates its estimate. No single short waiting time proves a steady recovery in every case.
The averaging window still contains the outage
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Connect it to the field
Example: recovery after an outage
A machine has been offline for a long time. It resumes normal local hashing at 12:00. At 12:05, its one-hour pool average is still low. That alone does not show a new failure, because most of the one-hour window still covers the outage. Check whether the pool is accepting new shares now. Then keep watching for as long as your site’s verification plan requires.
Now suppose local hashing continues, but no accepted shares appear under the correct worker. Save the relevant logs and a record of the current settings, and pass them on for diagnosis. A good comparison says what the evidence supports and what is still unknown.
Terms used in this lesson
- Local hashrate
- The miner’s report of its computing activity.
- Pool estimate
- The hashrate the pool estimates from accepted shares over a time window.
- Accepted work
- Shares the pool has checked and credited under its rules.
Optional references & further reading
Use current manufacturer instructions for the exact equipment and your site’s approved procedures. Course levels do not grant task authorization.