[ntp:questions] Re: NTP Clock Hopping Question

Tim Shoppa shoppa at trailing-edge.com
Wed Sep 24 12:30:04 UTC 2003


Ouk at netscape.net (Ouk) wrote in message news:<a6a0db3.0309230921.66dd5d82 at posting.google.com>...
> +10.3.1.11       10.1.3.4         2 u   63   64  377     0.89    1.081
>    0.70
> -10.1.1.11       10.2.1.2         2 u    6   64  377     0.87   -0.520
>    0.90
> +10.4.1.11       10.1.3.4         2 u   18   64  377     8.79    0.796
>    1.37
> *10.3.2.11       10.2.1.2         2 u   14   64  377     0.00   -0.379
>    1.33
>  LOCAL(0)        LOCAL(0)        10 l   39   64  377     0.00    0.000
>   10.48
> +NODE2           10.1.3.2         3 u   40   64  376    -0.27   -1.071
>    1.79
>
> I'm seeing (I believe) an excessive amount of clock hopping (every 2-3
> minutes or so) between the NTP servers.

You are probably polling the servers too quickly... modern ntpd's will
turn the poll interval up to 1024 seconds after the initial settle.  That
would make your clock hopping be 16 times less frequent ... not that clock
hopping is in itself a problem.

> I think the clock-hopping may be a result of the corporate server
> set-up, which is not under my control - The 'refid' of the Stratum-2
> servers appears to change quite frequently.

They may be polling the Stratum-1's too frequently as well.

I'm thinking that the ntpd that ships with UCX on VMS is not very recent
if it always polls at 64 second intervals.  My experience on VMS is with the
NTP functionality under Multinet, not UCX.

Tim.



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