[ntp:questions] Re: NTP looses connection

David Woolley david at djwhome.demon.co.uk
Sun Oct 31 18:24:05 UTC 2004


In article <4184d1a4$0$22601$9b4e6d93 at newsread4.arcor-online.net>,
Frank Dohrmann <f.dohrmann at arcor.de> wrote:

> communication is done at all, I find this fairly strange. Why do I have 
> to restart the application if the underlying network connection gets 
> lost for some seconds? Aren´t we talking about different osi layers that 
> should be independent?

That's largely a commercial issue, not a technical one.  Providing
stable addresses for a cheap service may be more trouble than it is
worth when 99.9% of users are essentially running pure clients with
short term connections.  It can also frustrate running servers, and
therefore allow for a premium service with the restriction removed.
If you actually have multiple interfaces, getting routes propagated to
different service providers is likely to be very expensive, and, I seem
to remember, it is only economical to do it for very large address blocks.

For a single homed system, there is no fundamental technical reason why
a stable address shouldn't be provided, but it often isn't.

Dynamic IP addresses on dialup are a consequence of the commercial
provision of internet access, not the original design of the internet.

> changing ip is the cause of my problem, I would expect this problem to 
> be fairly common.

Most dialin users only use web browsers and don't try to maintain a 
connection over multiple sessions.  As a linux user, you are in such a
minority that most ISP's will have no interest in serving your needs.
There are, however, two ISP's, at least, in the UK that will provide static
IP addresses on dialup.  One markets to technical users, like you.  The
other used to.



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