[ntp:questions] Re: Problem with good synchronization.

Marcin Okraszewszki okrasz_news at o2.pl
Fri Oct 15 15:00:18 UTC 2004


> This should work a whole lot better if you synchronize your NTP server 
> to an external time source.
>
> Think for a moment about what's happening here.  The clients, by 
> design, assume a stable and accurate source of time (stability is the 
> most important thing here).  This means that when a client finds an 
> error in its time or clock frequency, it assumes that its local clock 
> is in error and makes a correction.  The problem is that the server is 
> drifting as wildly as the clients!!!  The client is trying to 
> compensate for both its own drift and also for the server's drift.  I 
> can't see any way in which this can work very well!!!
>
> Get your server synchronized with a network server traceable to NIST 
> or a reference clock traceable to NIST and your clients should synch 
> up within twenty-four hours  Note also that Windows is not a great 
> platform to use as a time server; it loses in interrupts which means 
> it loses clock ticks.

But should I synchronize my Linux "clients" to the synchronized Windows
server, or rather also to public ntp servers? Anyway I cannot assume
that those computers are in internet connected network. They may work in
separated networks.

Those computers do not have to serve the *real* time. They just should
be synchronized, nothing else. I'm not much into ntp and computer clock,
but I suppose that computer clocks may work faster or slower but still
the time is linear. So, shouldn't those Linux clients adjust to time
flow in Windows server?

Regards,
Marcin Okraszewski





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