[ntp:questions] What exactly does "Maximum Distance Exceded" mean?

Joseph Gwinn joegwinn at comcast.net
Tue Mar 17 02:28:58 UTC 2009


In article <49BDC52B.20808 at ntp.org>, mayer at ntp.org (Danny Mayer) wrote:

> Joseph Gwinn wrote:
> 
> >>> The FAQ has to be the place for such explanations.
> >> I'm not sure if this qualifies as an FAQ as I don't recall that it has 
> >> come up before.  FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions.
> > 
> > RAQ then?  Rarely Asked Questions
> > 
> > Seriously, I can't believe that I'm the only person in history to be 
> > perplexed by these status codes, and those little three-word summaries 
> > are a bit telegraphic.
> > 
> > Joe Gwinn
> > 
> 
> You aren't the only one. These questions have been asked before by a
> number of people. In fact I had to look at this at one point when I was
> getting these codes. Of course I just looked at the source code and
> never looked for documentation.

My fundamental point is that expecting a significant part of the NTP 
user base to read the code simply does not scale, for a host of reasons.

 
> I will tell you that this is a combination of bits so it's not just a
> number. Each bit represents a test code that failed so you have quite a
> bit to look at.

Just for curiosity, how many semicolons are there in the NTPv3 and NTPv4 
codebases?  My impression is that each is about 20,000 or 30,000, but I 
don't know why or where I got the number.

Joe Gwinn




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