[ntp:questions] Trying to use Dimension 4 time keeper

David Woolley david at ex.djwhome.demon.invalid
Sat Sep 14 13:56:43 UTC 2013


On 14/09/13 10:45, David Taylor wrote:

> servers 100+ ms for servers on an inappropriate continent), and the
> offset column shows how well NTP is doing, the lower the offset the
> nearer to UTC is your PC running.  The offset value will be highly

Offset doesn't tell you this.  It tells you the difference between the 
best estimate of the local clock and best estimate of the time on the 
immediately upstream server, at the time of the last poll.  The latter, 
in particular, may be subject to systematic errors (in most internet 
cases, these will dominate) and both are subject to random errors. 
Generally the non-systematic component of the error in the local clock 
will be significantly less than the RMS offset.

Jitter is probably a better estimate of quality with respect to random 
errors.  There is no way of measuring systematic errors, except by 
accessing a source known to have lower ones.



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