[ntp:questions] Re: why is it so important that your servers all have the same notion of time?
Richard B. Gilbert
rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Sun Dec 12 18:54:52 UTC 2004
Folkert van Heusden wrote:
>The subject says it all.
>Where I work (an academic hospital in the netherlands), we have 4
>timeservers.
>Now I would like to introduce a fith timeserver but that one with a DCF77-
>receiver connected to it so that we've always a real good notion of time.
>I would say that is very important but I really can't give any good reasons
>for that. Very unfortunate.
>So my question is: why should we?
>
>
>Folkert van Heusden
>
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>
>
There are, I believe, two issues: correctness and stability.
Correctness simply means that the time can be meaningfully compared and
may be important for legal reasons. Stability means that the server is
"ticking" at a constant rate; it may not be exactly correct but it is
predictable. Stability is important because it is much easier to
synchronize closely with a stable source.
Adding a server synchronized by DCF77 could provide a time source that
is both more stable and more accurate than a server getting time over a
wide area network. VLF propagation can be more predictable than either
HF propagation or a network.
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