[ntp:questions] Default total number of servers NTP wants to have when using pool .....

Miroslav Lichvar mlichvar at redhat.com
Wed Dec 17 13:55:39 UTC 2014


On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 12:04:04PM +0000, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> I'd love to see discussion about "what should the default number of
> servers queried be for the 'pool' directive?"

The "How do I use pool.ntp.org?" page [1] is pretty clear, quoting:

  Be friendly. Many servers are provided by volunteers, and almost
  all time servers are really file or mail or webservers which just
  happen to also run ntp. So don't use more than four time servers
  in your configuration, and don't play tricks with burst or
  minpoll - all you will gain is extra load on the volunteer time
  servers.

> There is clearly a tradeoff, and I'm inclined to say that "between 5 and
> 9" is probably a good number.

Ok, but examples of ntpd configuration using pool.ntp.org should follow
their policy. Maybe you can convince them to change it. Do you think
the servers are ready to handle twice as many clients?

[1] http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/use.html

-- 
Miroslav Lichvar


More information about the questions mailing list