[ntp:questions] Re: NTP4 has 3 different time formats! Namly (32, 64, 128) bits wide
Richard B. Gilbert
rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Fri Jul 14 12:18:30 UTC 2006
Danny Mayer wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>
>>NTP could do worse than to adopt the VMS 64 bit time format. IIRC it
>>was a count of 100 nanosecond "ticks" since some date in (I think)
>>November 1857.
>
<snip>
>
>>The current 64 bit NTP timestamp wastes some bits in picosecond
>>precision. I say "wastes" because even today's computers cannot
>>exchange time without an uncertainty of two or three microseconds and
>>those low order bits are meaningless noise.
>>
>
>
> That's for today. In 10 years that may very well not be true.
>
The limitation, I believe, is in the round trip delay. My Sun Ultra
10s, separated by a Cisco 1548M switch and a few feet of cable, show
delays of the order of 4 microseconds at 100mb full duplex. Gigabit
Ethernet might shave a little off of that but not a whole lot.
If you are getting time over the internet you don't, and won't, have a
clue what the nanoseconds should be. Even over a fast LAN, the delay is
a killer.
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