[ntp:questions] Dimensioning & Configuring the NTP Server

Martin Burnicki martin.burnicki at meinberg.de
Fri Dec 14 09:00:34 UTC 2007


Hi,

Aggarwal Vivek-Q4997C wrote:
> Iam planning to have NTP Server for something around 50,000 Clients in
> the Network
> 
> Can Anyone guide me in dimensioning the NTP Server. What are the
> guidelines that I should take care for dimensioning the NTP Server

Real NTP clients with standard configuration sent queries once every 64
seconds, so 50,000 clients would produce a load of less than 800
(50,000/64) req/s. This can be handled easily by a standard PC, or by
dedicated NTP servers as the Meinberg LANTIME devices.

Normally the clients would also drop the request rate down to 1 request
every 1024 seconds, so the actual load will be even lower.

> Also can I two NTP Servers running in active-stand by or in Load
> balancing scenario in the same network

You can just install several NTP servers for redundancy, and configure the
clients to use all of them. 

However, using exactly 2 NTP servers is a bad choice. If the 2 servers
disagree on the right time (for whatever reason) then the clients are
unable to decide which of the servers to follow.

If you install 3 NTP servers and one of them is faulty then the clients will
automatically be able to identify the outlyer and thus ignore it. For
redundancy reasons (i.e. if 1 server is temporarily unreachable) the usual
advice here is to configure at least 4 NTP servers.

Regards,

Martin
-- 
Martin Burnicki

Meinberg Funkuhren
Bad Pyrmont
Germany




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