Please see my post in ARP - Work Available under HELP WANTED.

Mike

MCM is flowing well.

ARP is flowing now

"Ah, but there are plenty of results being returned so there can't possibly be anything wrong, can there?"
Sarcasm aside, I sympathise as I aim for fast return of results so I run small buffers. I got no new work between about 04:15 UTC and 19:30 UTC on 2025-06-14, resulting in my two fastest systems having no active work for 12 hours and my other ARP1 runner having a couple of dead hours.

The folks with smaller buffers are most likely to be hit by the reduced work availability followed by that "pause" that happens when one tranche of work has been sent out and the next tranche hasn't yet been made available to the feeder(s). The users who are returning stuff after 4 or 5 days (or missing the deadlines completely) are unlikely to run out of work so they may not notice unless there's a genuine hiatus (such as those caused by server crashes a while back).

It is unclear whether there is something in the "new work" pipeline that won't let the next tranche out until a majority of the old tranche has been completely processed, or whether it's "just the way things work" given the amount of processing effort available on the relevant WCG cluster. What's that phrase I see some times? Ah, yes - "First World problems..." :-) [No criticism intended!]

Cheers - Al.

P.S. The way they're set up, my systems can notionally handle about 30 ARP1 tasks a day between them, but I rarely get more than 25 and usually just less than 20, so supply is a bit "luck of the draw" even when there's plenty of work available! (They still manage a cumulative 600..650 MCM1 tasks a day, so they aren't idle...)

I went from an empty queue to more than 4 ARPs (quad core CPU) today. Something opened up today (Sunday). Woohoo!

ARPs are great because they run cooler and use slightly less electricity. Maybe the weather application doesn't take advantage of AVX2 CPU instruction sets or something.

@alanb: Very interesting comments, as usual. No worries -- I read zero criticism or antagonism in your post at all haha.

I typically like to run a 1-2 day buffer, especially in the cold season, but it's summer in the US South, so I'm torn between shutting down PCs completely or doing an approach in the middle with tiny buffers. At least I moved all my crunchboxes to the basement instead of in the bedroom and home office.