NTP Pool Project Reaches 500 Servers 165
A user writes "Finally after 3 years the NTP Pool project has reached 500 servers! The NTP pool project tries to be an accurate and free time-source to every internet-connected device. Everybody who's system has running an NTP daemon which can give an accurate time-indication can join the project. Not only is it handy to have accurate time on your workstation to be able to see when you need to leave the house to catch the train in time, it is also usefull to be able to accurately correlate events between your system and others in case one gets hacked."
Trains aren't that reliable (Score:4, Insightful)
And what makes sure the trains are on time?
Your machine is going to party like it's 1999 .... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some nifty bits of nastiness that can be delivered when a machine is privy to having its clock changed from afar.
Re:I just use my watch (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Your machine is going to party like it's 1999 . (Score:3, Insightful)
A proper NTP implemetation for a computer gathers information from several clock sources. The NTP protocol also has provisions to determine whether a clock is accurate or not based on the responses from other clocks. IIRC, this is called a "false ticker" in the spec.
Re:500 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oooo so exciting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New Way uses HW (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, what a GPS receiver gives you is a stratum 1 host. What are you going to do, get a receiver per machine? Of course not, you connect it to one box with a NTP server, and make the rest synchronize with it.
Perhaps the usefulness of public NTP servers is somewhat less now, but they're still good to have. I'm sure at many companies buying a GPS receiver could be complicated, even though accurate time is a very, very nice thing to have these days.
Re:New Way uses HW (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, most machines locked in a rack in a hosting facility don't have even the slightest chance of seeing enough sky to lock onto GPS, so it's safe to say that NTP's death or obsolesence is premature to announce just yet. :-)
--
-Chuck
PS: O Slashdot wizards, why does Slashdot's posting filter claim ntpq output is lame?
It's a conspiracy, I tell you, to force me to write more text!
Bah, that doesn't work, the lameness filter doesn't like a line filled with "=" signs at all, even if I use an <ecode> tag.
Re:New Way uses HW (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless your data center is inside a shielded room / underground / in the center of your building.
It is great that NTP is so widely distributed. It is typical that at the moment the old technology is finally working, there is an altogether better solution.
Its not a better solution - its a better solution in some cases.
NTP has the massive advantage of working anywhere you have a network connection and not requiring expensive hardware (GPS hardware you can attach to a PC & match the reliability of NTP is not your yum-cha $75 GPS unit)
Stratums (Score:5, Insightful)
It would also be nice if ISPs would set up their own pools (and advertise them) so clients wouldn't have to go off network, and then if end-users would would set up their own pool for their networks. Not every machine that needs accurate time has to be at stratum-2 or stratum-3, especially workstations. The NTP Pool website makes it look like it is a good idea if every machine on a network syncs to the NTP Pool, instead of setting up internal servers, which is how NTP is really designed to work.
Re:Your machine is going to party like it's 1999 . (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) A proper NTP implementation will only normally change the skew of your clock, so it speeds up or slows down, but does not jump around.
2.) A proper NTP implementation will assume that a clock with a large variance compared to other sources is unreliable, and so it will try not to use it. Of course this assumes you have more than one time source available (and configured).
Re:New Way uses HW (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, not everyone wants to setup an antenna on the roof and wire it into the computer room.
For typical computer network purposes (where relative time accuracy is more important than absolute accuracy), NTP is a very good solution. It will get all systems on your lan within milliseconds or better, and the whole network within tens of milliseconds. It will be better than a message-based (non-PPS) GPS receiver connected to all your systems!
When you require nanosecond accuracy, you probably don't need it on all systems in your network.