[ntp:questions] strange behaviour of ntp peerstats entries.

[David Woolley]

David L. Mills wrote:
> David,
> 
> I don't know what you mean by "figure head", but this is probably what 

I meant that it is the one peer chosen to represent all the peers 
actually used.

> is intended. The statistics such as root delay, root dispersion and 
> related statistics are in fact inherited from the system peer, but the 
> actual clock offset is computed as a weighted average. See the draft 
> MT{v4 specification.

I believe that there is a common misconception that ntpd choses one peer 
and then uses that as the only source of time information unless and 
until it chooses a new one.

I believe there is also a related one, which does have same historical 
basis in fact, that ntpd only uses time from the lowest numbered 
stratum.  (As I understand it version three included the stratum in the 
weighting, but version 4 does not.)