[ntp:questions] Refreshing IP Addresses

Hal Murray hal-usenet at ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net
Fri Sep 28 20:03:17 UTC 2007


In article <1190997805.459682.160870 at 19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com>,
 Evandro Menezes <evandro at mailinator.com> writes:
>Many former participants of the NTP pool have stated that they
>continue with lingering NTP clients after they left the pool.
>
>The reason for this is that ntpd never tries to resolve an IP address
>(assuming that *.pool.ntp.org was used) ever again.  Therefore,
>clients which are seldom rebooted, will stick to the same NTP servers
>for a long time.
>
>I was wondering if it would make sense to open some windows when ntpd
>could resolve the addresses again.  One such window would be when ntpd
>steps the time, which puts it into a state perhaps similar to when
>it's started.
>
>I imagine that such a new resolution of addresses for the NTP servers
>in the pool would also help distributing the load among them more
>fairly.

There was a discussion about this area a while ago.  The idea
there was to switch to better servers.

I don't think when the clock steps would be good enough.  Most
clocks don't step very often.

One good time would be when the server stops responding.
Or sends you a kiss-of-death packet.  It might take
some special DNS hacking to answer the question "Is this
server still in the pool?"

The pool is a special case, but the ideas might be useful
in the normal case.  Suppose you want to change a server's
IP Address.

-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.




More information about the questions mailing list