[ntp:questions] How much Jitter can commercial NTP tolerate (I'm talking a huge jitter here)

candice.uhlir at ngc.com candice.uhlir at ngc.com
Thu Mar 31 03:43:53 UTC 2005


I have a need ('please don't ask why...to synchronize a computer system
that runs  on an aperiodic clock tick of 64ms where that "tick" can be
stretched out to as much a 700ms at certain times.  This does not hurt
this one of a kind system since it just clocks off of these pulses.
OUr problem is that our data is "time tagged" with a count of how many
of these 64 pulses have arrived since a reference time of 0 and we try
to process these data elements on the ground.  We can't speed up 64ms
clock to real time....however if we can slow our ground system to run
on these stretched out 64ms pulses all should, in theory, be ok.

  We were wondering what would happen if we removed our GPS stimuli
from our NTP server (A Datachron) and replaced the gps stimuli with a
time generated from our 64ms wierdo time pulses.  What would the
commercial NTP software in a SUN or SGI workstation do when faced with
this abnormally huge jitter??  ANybody have any other guesses on other
effects we may see?  

Candice Uhlir
Northrop Grumman Space Technology




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