[ntp:questions] General ntp architecture question

David J Taylor david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk.invalid
Mon Aug 2 11:33:48 UTC 2010


"Rob" <nomail at example.com> wrote in message 
news:slrni5d1ia.d49.nomail at xs8.xs4all.nl...
[]
> I would not recommend to use the pool, but either try to find the money
> required for a local clock receiver (which I can understand could be
> very difficult in a bank), or else configure a couple of fixed servers
> that have announced that they are available for public use.

I agree with this and Rob's other recommendations.  However, a GPS/PC 
receiver system need not be expensive (roof location preferred for the 
antenna), and I would suggest that about US $300-400 would be enough for 
the hardware (minimum Intel Atom fan-less PC, Garmin GPS 18x LVC puck 
receiver, FreeBSD).  My own system is described here:

  http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/FreeBSD-GPS-PPS.htm
  http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/FreeBSD-GPS-PPS.htm#atom

If you have a world-wide operation, I would suggest a geographic dispersal 
of GPS-locked PCs, with perhaps one (ideally more) GPS-locked PCs per 
location.  Aim for three locations (and therefore a minimum of three 
reference servers).

You could get away with a few servers inside your network locked to one or 
more GPS PCs, and have those servers serving the remaining servers and 
client PCs.  Try to have at least one server per site, so that normally 
inter-site time requests are minimised.

Just some thoughts.....

How accurately does everything need to be synced?

Cheers,
David 




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