I have tons of outgoing connections, I don't get many orphans. That's the point of all the connections.
Right now I have 1 in 47, and that one occurred at the very end of that 1,000,000 blocksize test... prior to that, I had the 3 orphaned out of 256...
6 outgoing connections only certainly isnt optimal, especially if you aren't listening for incoming connections... but, then, I only have 11 so far after node being online for over 12hrs. One of them connects within seconds (*cough* p2pool-node). Relying on 6 random outgoing connections to not get orphans? Some crap shoot
oh, here's a good example of why you should at least do like 2500 block size:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 5.000000 Share difficulty: 1218.324058 Total block value: 25.915000 BTC including 3 transactions
zvs, you only work by feeling, not stats. Feelings aren't good advisors...
1/
I've studied "6 random connections" for weeks and got 105+ efficiency constantly and most of the time 110+. It works, there's nothing to discuss if you didn't test it and then got bad efficiency repeatedly for days. Nothing is set in stones and things may change in the future, but right now there's no reason to advise to use large amount of connections unless you have hard data showing meaningful efficiency differences. There's one obvious reason to advise against it : it uses bandwidth that is limited: you use a dedicated server where it could be OK (additional CPU usage might make it bad) but many like me use an ADSL connection where it would simply kill efficiency (tested).
2/
your example of 25.915BTC with 3 transactions is just that, an example. Unless things changed dramatically these past days, there's no way you will get this amount of fees constantly with only 2500 block size. And even if it was the case, you'll have to compare both efficiency and fees to what you get with blockmaxsize=1_000_000 and other values to decide if it's advisable to use such a low block size.
