[ntp:questions] NTP request retry?

Rob nomail at example.com
Sun Jan 26 19:08:37 UTC 2014


On a very quiet network, I observe that ntpd sometimes has a very
high loss rate: reach is 6, for example.

When using "ping" or any other protocol, no packet loss at all is
observed.

My hypothesis is that the ARP entry for the NTP server has timed out,
and when ARP has to resolve an entry in some implementations the first
packet is always lost (it is not cached pending a reply).
When the cycle is 1024 seconds, the ARP entry has again timed out the
next poll cycle and the issue is the same.

Is there a way, short of switching to burst mode, to make ntpd retry
a request when no reply is received e.g. within a second?
It should only retry when there is no reply, and not more than e.g.
3 times (when still no reply it should simply wait for the next poll
cycle)



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