[ntp:hackers] Re: NTP and leap-seconds

Tim Shoppa shoppa at trailing-edge.com
Sun Jul 2 17:42:14 UTC 2006


"David L. Mills" <mills at udel.edu> wrote:
> The usual behavior is that servers do not realize a leapsecond is 
> pending, either because they have not been told using ntpdc or the 
> radios or drivers do not implement the warning. So the code sifts from 
> among the (usually) three survivors of the mitigation algorithms and 
> sets the leap if one or more show leap. You suggestion would change that 
> to require two out of the three to set the leap. What if there are only 
> two survivors?

Now, if we have four stratum 2 server that each get time from 4
of 16 independent stratum 1's, and a hundred stratum 3 servers that
each get time from the four stratum 2's, AND a single stratum 1
mistakenly gives a leapsecond pending for a while, then a single stratum
2 will get "infected" and then you can end
up with a hundred stratum 3's thinking that there's a leapsecond pending
as a result of a single mistaken stratum 1.

> The most reliable and secure solution to the false alarm problem is to 
> run Autokey and use the leapsecond table as distributed from the primary 
> servers.

It may be profitable to distribute this table without having to resort
to Autokey etc. Not that Autokey is bad or even difficult but it's not
commonly set up.

Tim.


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