[ntp:questions] Re: simple time server

Bryan Henderson bryanh at giraffe-data.com
Thu Aug 3 02:44:30 UTC 2006


>It takes a couple of hours for the program to figure out "what the time 
>is precisely".

Remember that in this thread, I'm talking about a situation where the
local clock of one computer is the time standard.  If the time server
is running on that computer, it knows by definition at all times
precisely what time it is.

There is a whole class of applications of network time service where
it's important that a bunch of computers adhere to a time standard,
but that standard doesn't have to be UTC.  There's also a whole class
of applications where wristwatch level precision is adequate.  In my
case, I can't imagine making use of more than about 100 ms precision.

I think I've discovered in my brief investigation of the Ntpd
reference implementation that it is not appropriate for those
applications.  I'm still trying to figure out whether NTP itself is.

-- 
Bryan Henderson                                    Phone 408-621-2000
San Jose, California



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