[ntp:questions] Synchronizing against a free-running server

[Jeroen Mostert]

On 2013-04-15 11:40, detha wrote:
> We have been trying to convince ntpd to synchronize with a free-running
> windows server (why one would want to do this is another question, suffice
> to say there are political reasons).
>
I'm sort of curious what reasons those could be. Is the Windows machine the 
domain controller and do people think that syncing with it is better than not 
syncing with it?

This is sort-of true, even, although this set-up is really weak. Even so, in my 
experience, having ntpd clients sync with a w32time server is still not as bad 
as the other way around. The best set-up is ntpd all the way, of course, whether 
you sync with external time or not. Even sync to within 1 second is not 
something w32time can promise (although that's probably more a problem on the 
client side than the server side).

The next logical step might be sneaking ntpd onto the Windows server. It 
performs fine, especially on Windows Server 2012/W8. Installing ntpd on all 
Windows clients could be a bit more involved.

-- 
J.