What is a worker exactly from Antminer Pool Worker field

Question

So I see on the What is a worker? post that a worker is "simply an identifier for you to use so that you can track different machines within your account".

For someone that just started maintaining bitcoin systems for others and only configures the Antiminers I wanted to get some clarification that may help me understand better.

Note: I have not ever registered for a wallet account (e.g. Antminer, etc.) and only maintain a farm for someone else and was given the detail to plug in per each miner.

Question

Correlated sub questions for context to help understand what I'm trying to get my head around here

• Is a Worker any random name you make up right then in the Antminer General Settings > Pool # > Worker field, or do you set these up with your associated Antminer account and then once on the pool start dropping in the names you registered on your account?

  

  • I assume once you use one specific Worker name that you will get an error if you try to use that same name on that same pool from another miner device?

  • The pool is a URL with a port number and the Worker seems to be a private name you use on your account connected to this public URL pool but the Workers in this context are like the private bitcoin miner nodes—if someone else on that same URL pool from another account uses the same Worker name as another account's Worker name, then that does not make any difference—only no duplicates on same account only, right?

Answer 1

What is a worker exactly from Antminer Pool Worker field?

a worker is "simply an identifier for you to use so that you can track different machines within your account".

Is a Worker any random name you make up right then in the Antminer General Settings > Pool # > Worker field, or do you set these up with your associated Antminer account and then once on the pool start dropping in the names you registered on your account?

You set these up with your pool and then use them in your mining hardware to keep track of individual machines.

I assume once you use one specific Worker name that you will get an error if you try to use that same name on that same pool from another miner device?

No, you can generally use a worker name over and over on different machines, all the work is added together to show the worker work.

The pool is a URL with a port number and the Worker seems to be a private name you use on your account connected to this public URL pool but the Workers in this context are like the private bitcoin miner nodes—if someone else on that same URL pool from another account uses the same Worker name as another account's Worker name, then that does not make any difference—only no duplicates on same account only, right?

I thought that you had to enter your username and worker password in addition to the information shown in your screenshot. In many pools you enter the username as {username}_{workername} or similar. The worker password hardly needs to be secret - if someone steals it they can generally just mine on your account giving you greater share.

To answer, it depends on the pool but generally worker names are isolated to sepcific individual accounts, so it doesn't matter if a different user on the pool has the same worker name. If you can create the worker name on your pool account it should be safe.