[ntp:questions] Re: Peer to Peer

David Woolley david at djwhome.demon.co.uk
Sun Sep 25 22:22:17 UTC 2005


in article <jZBZe.2185$KQ5.766 at newssvr12.news.prodigy.com>,
Mark St Laurent <stormrunner'_removethis'@comcast.net> wrote:

> I need advise on how to set up NTP for windows clients that do not 
> authenticate to a Primary Domain Controller. My Cisco router is set to 
> update via NTP and broadcasts to the LAN. When I set net time /setsntp: 

setsntp does not use NTP it uses a Microsoft broken implementation of
SNTP; you should either get support for this from Microsoft, or install
the proper (free) implementation of NTP for NT.

Note that W32Time doesn't support acting as a broadcast client.

> (routeraddress) nothing happens. I read some articles on Microsoft's web 
> site but these seem to create "Authoratative Servers" . I dont think I want 
> to be creating a bunch of these just to keep time synced.

You will need the routers to be synchronised to an authorative server
in the sense that they are traceable to a hardware UTC time source,
before they will serve time as valid.  However, your problem may be that
w32time makes requests in the wrong mode.  Also, I wouldn't be surprised
if w32time used times that were marked as invalid.

> Subject: Peer to Peer

Although one of the bugs in W32Time is that it makes peer, rather than
server requests, it actually needs to be operated in a client server
configuration, so the subject doesn't make sense.

Note that NTP does not form a consensus amongst peers; it requires 
the presence of reference clocks that are, externally, synchronised to
true UTC time.  If you want a consensus time, you will need to use
the timed protocol (although I know of no Windows implementations).

Also, I vaguely remember that some versions of W32Time were nobbled 
to prevent workstations using it except as subordinates to a domain
controller.




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