[ntp:questions] Very rapid polling

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Tue Feb 10 03:36:36 UTC 2009


"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:

>jlevine wrote:
>> In the last few days I have seen an increasing number of systems that
>> are requesting the time in NTP format several times per second. This
>> poll interval is far in excess of the usual best practices. Since
>> there are a number of such systems, it is possible that this problem
>> is a result of a new version of NTP that has just been released.
>> Please let me know if you have any information about a new version of
>> NTP that can do this or if any of you are seeing the same problem.
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> Judah Levine
>> Time and Frequency Division
>> NIST Boulder

>Have you captured the IP addresses of the systems involved?  If so, have 
>you identified the ISP responsible for those addresses?  Complained to 
>the ISP?  Etc, etc?

>The half witted will always be with us. . . .

There is no way you can set up ntpd so that it will poll many times a
second, unless there is a severe bug in ntp. He is asking if perhaps such a
bug exists in the latest version of ntpd ( since the latest version just
came out a month ago, and latest devel version a week ago, this would be a
sensible worry).
Alternatively one of those modem manufacturers may have screwed up again,
or some ntp  like program has come out that has such a default.
I agree that asking the IP addressee what it is that they are running might
work, but probably not.




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