[ntp:questions] Syncing to nearby vs. faraway servers

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Tue Jun 16 13:50:26 UTC 2009


John Hasler <john at dhh.gt.org> writes:

>Richard B. Gilbert writes:
>> Country pools were a good start and probably adequate for small
>> countries.  Countries the size of the U.S.  or the U.S.S.R. can't use a
>> country wide pool and have much hope of getting a nearby server.  For the
>> U.S. I'd want a "New England pool", a "middle Atlantic pool" (New Jersey,
>> Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virgina), a Southern Atlantic Pool,
>> etc.  This assumes that "net space" maps well to geographical space which
>> may not always be a good assumption.

>My best servers are often on the coasts.  I'm in Wisconsin.  In any case
>country pools are quite adequate for 99% of users for whom anything better
>than +-0.5 seconds is good enough.

>> If a request for a pool server could specify the requester's latitude and
>> longitude perhaps that information could be used to assign a nearby
>> server?

>Seems like an unnecessary complication.  Anyone who needs that sort of
>performance should be willing and able to select servers by hand.
>-- 

Or buy themselves a GPS time source.

>John Hasler 
>john at dhh.gt.org
>Dancing Horse Hill
>Elmwood, WI USA




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