[ntp:questions] Re: Philosophical question about strata

Lee Sailer lee.sailer at direcway.com
Thu Oct 13 00:08:36 UTC 2005


First, thanks to everybody for replying.  However, my original question
was not as clear as it could have been.  Let me continue...

My company has 6 GPS time sources at various worldwide locations.  They
are stratum 1.

Every once in awhile, one or the other of them has a harddware problem.
 As a result, that one will drift a little.  That is, its offset will
be 1, 2, or more seconds different from the other five.  When we detect
this, we replce the hardware as a matter of course.

Now, it seems to me that a stratum 2 server will never have this
problem.  It gets time from several places, and uses the various
algorithms to try to make sense.  The stratum 1 gets time from a bunch
of satellites, and then if it screws up the calculation or has some
sort of hardware glitch, then it is screwed.

Therefore, I conclude:

1.  If everything is working, stratum 1 is better than stratum 2.
2.  If the stratum 1 hardware is suffering a slow degradation
breakdown, then the stratum 2 will be better.

Whaddya think 8-)

lee




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