[ntp:questions] A faster settling NTP

unruh unruh at wormhole.physics.ubc.ca
Thu Dec 24 00:43:12 UTC 2009


On 2009-12-23, E-Mail Sent to this address will be added to the BlackLists <Null at BlackList.Anitech-Systems.invalid> wrote:
> unruh wrote:
>> David J Taylor wrote:
> ---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|
>>>> It is a massive coding job. chorny is not exactly a two
>>>>  line program.  And David Mills, who controls the
>>>>  algorithm of ntpd, does not have any interest in
>>>>  implimenting any other algorithm, at least at this time.
>>>
>>> The code is available - so why not demonstrate that the
>>>  algorithm can be improved in a private version?
>>
>> ??? The code is NOT available on ntpd. It would require
>>  a large coding job to impliment the chrony algorithm
>>  into ntpd and if you knew that your one year worth of
>>  work would never ever make it into ntpd, why would you
>>  do it? To properly integrate it you have to know ntpd
>>  intimately, know chrony ( or at least the algorithm)
>>  intmately, and do the coding job.
>
> So, you expect some one else to do programming for you?

Yup. I am not competent at coding, nor do I have the time to learn ntpd
sufficiently well, and since the controller of ntpd, D Mills, has no
interest whatsoever in any alterations of the code base of the algorithm
that ntpd uses, I also have no motivation. As people have said, I can
use chrony. And now that chrony supports refclocks, the only motivation
I had is gone as well. I have spent a fair amount of time testing and
comparing chrony and ntpd-- that has been my contribution. What has
yours been?

>
> If you, the person pushing this solution, are not interested
>  in making the effort to do the programming, the likelihood
>  of anyone else doing it for you is slim or none.

If, after I have demonstrated that the algorithm used by chrony is both
much faster, and is much more accurate than that in ntpd, noone in the
ntpd community cares, I am afraid I do not either. Clearly it would be
best if the reference implimentation used the best possible algorithm.
Since it does not and since an implimentation of the better one exists,
I guess I will have to do the Linux vs Windows thing, and "take the road
less trodden".

>
>  If you aren't interested in making the effort, why do you
>   (apparently uselessly) keep flogging your "ultimate solution"?

In the hope that there are some people ( obviously not including you) in
the time keeping community which this is the newsgroup of, who might be
interested. And in the hope that enough will be interested that the
development will continue. And because as a scientist, I am interested
in understanding why the one algorithm is apparently better than the
other.

>




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