Personal XMRig Proxy

Posted: Sat | May 27, 2023

Mining

Personal XMRig Proxy - Great for slow internet

Few people know of or use XMRig-Proxy, despite being developed alongside the popular Monero mining client: XMRig. According to the README, XMRig-Proxy was developed to support the donations built into xmrig clients. So it is compatible with the Stratum protocol, and is easily able to manage a high rate of connections and disconnections. It also notes that 100K workers, through XMRig-Proxy, are exposed as just 391 workers from the perspective of the pool.

It’s a great tool for people with large mining operations, but I’ve discovered a use case for small operations that is seldom discussed.

Mining on a slow internet connection

If you live in a rural area with a slow internet connection, we may have something in common. I, like many homes around me, have an upload speed of around 20 Mbps and a download speed of 50 Mbps. A few decades ago this was cutting edge stuff, but believe it or not if you are resourceful it’s more than enough bandwidth in 2023. I frequently visit locations with internet connections slower than this, but I’m confident my XMR-Proxy setup would do fine there too.

I have four computers in my house, three of which are set to mine Monero on just 1 thread and 256 MB of RAM. Three machines is a drop in the bucket for any pool, but even on the stratum protocol it uses a chunk of bandwidth I would prefer to allocate elsewhere. It helps to remember that your home network can be very fast for very cheap.

Mining resourcefully on a slow internet connection

The solution is simple. My fourth machine is always up running XMRig-Proxy (and a few other programs), and any mining client points to the proxy instead of directly to a pool. Because my internal network is wired with Cat6A, and my router has a bandwidth of 2.20 Gbps, I can transfer much more data internally without breaking a sweat. With all three machines working, this proxy setup uses just over one-third the bandwidth for my WAN connection as the setup without the proxy.

As with many computing performance problems, it’s all a matter of where you choose to do your work. When it comes to mining or running cryptocurrency nodes, it’s a massive benefit to consider how your home network can make things easier for you. If I were to upgrade my router for $600, I could achieve a bandwidth nearing 8 Gbps internally. I don’t think Comcast offers a service like that these days.

Setup

The setup for xmrig-proxy is quite easy, just take a browse of the readme, and wiki

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