[ntp:questions] (Software) timeserver for windows being broadcast-able incl. keys

Erik e.van.duijn at heineken.nl
Mon Mar 19 20:01:02 UTC 2007


On 18 mrt, 13:43, "Ryan Malayter" <malay... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 18, 12:09 am, Tom Smith <s... at cag.zko.hp.com> wrote:
>
> > He can change the server - address(es)/netmask(s), maybe add NICs -
> > and maybe he can change the router configuration. What he can't
> > change at the moment is the clients, so he's stuck with trying
> > to find a broadcast solution that hits 4 different subnets of
> > different sizes.
>
> > I'm sure Erik would rather be doing something else by now. :-)
>
> Agreed. I'd work with the manufacturer to change the clients; surely
> other customers of theirs have the similar issues. Erik really needs a
> unicast or multicast setup for NTP because the network topology.
>
> If the clients absolutely cannot change for any reason, the final
> option would be a "brute force" approach: actually put a physical NTP
> server (old junk PC running Linux or *BSD) in each of the four
> subnets. Have each of these broadcast to its local subnet, while
> getting the time from your main time server (and some other time
> sources from off-network).
>
> If money isn't an issue, you could even get some nice little Soekris
> or Gumstix boxes to be time servers for each subnet. This could be
> cheaper and easier than re-architecting the network topology to be
> "flatter".
>
> Regards,
>   Ryan

Hello Ryan, (Tom, Danny, . name list is quite long already ;-)

I have tried to understand the discussion up till now but because of
lack of knowledge on this matter
(as well as English not being my native language) I must admit I do
not fully understand it

What I do understand is that the difficulty is in the combination of
broadcast-time-correcting inchangeable
 (broadcast-)clients on different network segments by one server

What I still would like to know:

Is the following (earlier posted) idea...

>broadcast 145.47.51.127 key 1
>broadcast 145.47.51.255 key 1
>broadcast 145.47.52.127 key 1
>broadcast 145.47.53.127 key 1

..from server...

>IP-adres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .: 145.47.54.146
>Subnetmask . . . . . . . . . . . .: 255.255.255.128
>Standaardgateway . . . . . . . .: 145.47.54.129

... definetely useless or still worth a try?

BTW: the manufacturer advises to install its systems in the same
network segment behind a router to be coupled with the company-VLAN
The time server, being on the same router, will be able to reach all
clients by broadcast
Yet, here we do not have networks-per-manufacturer but mixed networks,
resulting in a network with systems of this manufacturer
spread across the whole network (which is divided into several
subnets)

Kind regards and thank you for the good discussion so far

Erik
Holland




More information about the questions mailing list