[ntp:questions] "good enough" ntp configuration

Jason Rabel jason at extremeoverclocking.com
Sat Jun 9 19:34:51 UTC 2007


Mark,

What are these "Campus Systems" currently running for their OS and time
synchronization, and how many machines are we talking about?

If we are talking about single or double digit *nix machines, then of course
you would want to go with NTP for their time sync. But if you are talking
about thousands of Windows machines, then it might be easier just to use the
built-in windows time sync but have it point to your local source and sync
more often than the default settings. It all boils down to how accurate you
want the time to be vs how much work you want to do.

As others have pointed out, if you want to do the proper NTP hierarchy &
failover, it would be good practice to have a couple servers act as
stratum-2 machines and sync via internet to some other stratum-1 sources,
then use the combination of those 4 machines for your NTP clients.

Also when using NTP to set the prefer flag to your GPS source as that would
probably be the most accurate time and prevent NTP from hopping around
sources or choosing the wrong one.




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