Most users (clients and hosts) don't need to do this.
If you want to start your own pool of hosts:
vipnode pool -vv --bind "0.0.0.0:8080"
This will start a basic pool with no payment mechanism. To setup your own payment DApp,
you can provide --contract.* flags to configure it. If you'd like to use a different
payment mechanism, you'll need to define a payment structure like the one in pool/payment.
Clients are designed to connect to a set of hosts discovered via the pool, but the client can also connect to a host directly as if it were a dummy pool.
Pools are designed to provide an economic incentive between the client and host. Clients provide a deposit of a spending balance to the pool, and the pool keeps track of which hosts the client is connected to. At the end of some period (e.g. a week), the pool withdraws the necessary balances from the clients' deposits to settle the hosts' earnings.
The payment mechanism is managed by a smart contract maintained here: https://github.com/vipnode/vipnode-contract
The goal is to keep the payment and pool registration optional and replaceable.