[ntp:questions] NTP Broadcast/Multicast Benefits
Danny Mayer
mayer at gis.net
Thu Aug 4 17:08:30 UTC 2005
Matt Kinard wrote:
> Howdy guys!
> I was wondering if anyone could enumerate on the reasons why one
> would want to configure an ntp in a broadcast/multi-cast mode. Do we
> see siginifcant network performance issues in client/server mode? I
> know that the management of the NTP configuration could be simplified if
> the bc/mc mode is used, but are there any other benefits? What about
> drawbacks?
>
The best configuration is with multicast rather than broadcast. With
broadcast a packet gets sent out to everyone, while with multicast it
only gets sent to those systems that request to join the multicast
group. If EVERY node in the network is requesting it it may be simpler
to just do broadcast, though that restricts you to IPv4 only. With
broadcast/multicast packets are sent every 64 seconds. With client
server, the client makes requests based on whether or not it's
synchronized and settled down (or it has lost the connection) and can be
anything from 64 seconds to 1024 seconds. These are small packets so
the traffic only gets high if a lot of nodes are requesting the service.
At that point, multicast and broadcast are far better.
Danny
> Thanks all!
> Matt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> questions mailing list
> questions at lists.ntp.isc.org
> https://lists.ntp.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
>
More information about the questions
mailing list