[ntp:questions] Bad NTP servers jeopardizing the pool.ntp.org initiative

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wolfgang.rupprecht+gnus200704 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 04:23:00 UTC 2007


mayer at ntp.isc.org (Danny Mayer) writes:
> Which point would that be? Having NTP servers with varying addresses is
> a good idea? 

It appears to me that pools is on the verge of collapse from way too
high a load.  There are only ~1000 pools servers right now.  (ref:
http://www.pool.ntp.org/ right side bar.)  The load on each server is
described as 5-15 packets per second for a data rate of 10-15kbit/sec.
(ref http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html) That comes out to ~5GByte per
month.  I'm not sure my ISP will be that happy with me if I committed
to that high an added load.  I would have much fewer worries if the
load were 1/10th what it is.  To do that pools has to expand to 10x
its current size.  Opening pools to dynamic hosts would allow a
significantly larger pool of host to apply.

(* (/ 15e3 8) 60 60 24 30) 4.86 GBytes / month

> ... there are a lot of other NTP clients out there. We already have
> cases of people hardcoding IP addresses of NTP servers without
> unauthorization of the owner of the NTP server.

The fastest way to break people of the habit of wiring in IP addresses
would be to only allow dynamic hosts into pools.  Unless they use the
hostname as they are instructed to, they won't get any time service
after a while.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/




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