[ntp:questions] Resolving Hostnames

throindarts at yahoo.com throindarts at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 18 17:51:45 UTC 2007


Hi,
I would like to know if there is a way to tell ntpd to periodically re-
resolve the hostnames provided in ntp.conf. When ntpd starts up it
will resolve the hostnames using DNS but it appears to lock onto the
IP it selects and never re-checks DNS to see if the hostname resolves
to a different IP.

I am considering a load-balancing approach which would use multiple
DNS entries (1 for each NTP server in the pool) and a TTL value
allowing the load to evenly distribute among the servers in the pool.
In this case the client will send NTP requests to the same host but
get NTP responses from physically different servers. All servers in
the pool peer with one another.

The way it is working right now, each client may surely get a
different server in the pool but I have no way to ensure that each of
potentially millions of clients select the server in a way which will
balance the load on my servers. Also note that the server pool (at
least at first) will be geographically located in the same data
center.

With the approach I would like to take, the load would balance on a
request basis and not on a client basis...that is the reason for my
question about ntpd resolving the hostname.

thanks




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