[ntp:questions] Windows NTP Internet & fault-tolerance (multiple NTP servers)

michaelw michael.wardlaw at datacom.com.au
Wed Nov 16 06:09:44 UTC 2005


Hopefully I'm in the right group.  Microsoft states in KB884776
"Configuring the Windows Time service against a large time offset"
"We highly recommend that you configure the authoritative time server
to gather the time from a hardware source. When you configure the
authoritative time server to sync with an Internet time source, there
is no authentication."

I suppose here MS are warning against possible spoofing of time
servers.  Has anyone heard anything in relation to this issue, or have
a better idea of what Microsoft means here?

Also from the FAQ for protocols.time.ntp
(http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-def.htm):

NTP is a fault-tolerant protocol that will automatically select the
best of several available time sources to synchronize to. Multiple
candidates can be combined to minimize the accumulated error.
Temporarily or permanently insane time sources will be detected and
avoided.

I'd like to hear from people who have had experience configuring
multiple external NTP Servers (ie fault tolerance) for Windows NTP,
either for Windows 2000 or 2003.  How did you set it up and what sort
of results have you had?

Cheers

Michael




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