[time] What is happening here?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Aug 6, 2007, at 11:09 AM, Philip M. White wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 11:06:03AM -0700, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>> Turk Telecom is welcome to use the pool, according to the generally
>> published access policy, but they aren't welcome to hard-code pool
>> addresses into every router they ship to their users-- they need to
>> use a vendor address specifically for them if they wish to do that.
>
> Just to play the devil's advocate, what is the advantage to us if Turk
> Telekom uses a vendor address?

The people running the DNS for the vendor address can readily change  
which NTP servers handle the traffic.  We can also encourage them to  
recognize that it is to their own advantage to service such traffic  
as locally as possible, and have them start running their own NTP  
servers.

> This would allow us to disable it or redirect it at some point, and
> maybe even allow timeservers to opt out of participating in that  
> vendor
> pool, but wouldn't that just make things worse for those servers who
> remain?

Perhaps.  Some people have the bandwidth and hardware to easily  
handle the level traffic in question (10 - 30 KB/s of NTP queries),  
and thus aren't going to worry about serving time to that ISP.

Other people who are affected by the NTP queries from them would be  
able to opt-out, which would make them happier and probably willing  
to live in the global or a regional NTP pool rather than leaving the  
pool entirely, which is starting to happen in some cases as a result  
of the traffic load.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck