[ntp:questions] Re: NTP client on Windows platform provides less accurate results then on the UNIX or Linux. Why?

Ry malayter at gmail.com
Fri Apr 14 17:36:54 UTC 2006


>Does anyone else want a bunch of Windows systems sending 5 packets
>every 4 seconds to NTP servers? ;^>

This paper doesn't describe an an actual product, it's just a demo from
MS Research. Nor is it something that would ever be unleashed on the
internet's public NTP servers.

The proposal is for WiFi-based audio devices. They are
time-synchronized using modified NTP so they can play their assigned
audio packets at the correct time (an application in which microseconds
matter, because the human ear is a sensitive timing device).  The time
source is the audio bitstream generator on the same WiFi LAN (DVD
player or whatever), not a public NTP server.

I think what Terje is hoping is that the higher-resolution system
timers and better interrupt handling will find it's way into Windows
some day (not the 1.25 packets/second behavior). It does look as though
the high-resolution, hardware-supported timers are coming in Windows
Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/CEC/mm-timer.mspx




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