[ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01

Unruh unruh-spam at physics.ubc.ca
Thu Oct 29 01:15:35 UTC 2009


"Wilson R. Afonso" <wafonso at csse.unimelb.edu.au> writes:

>On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:34:19 GMT, Unruh wrote:
>> Agreed. But I am curious, since I do not see much demand on capability
>> to hosting such a server, so the reason he gives is puzzling. It may be
>> that the administration thinks that hosting such a server is a high
>> capabilities job. Or it could be that they lost the person who really
>> knew ntp and noone else feels comfortable supporting it.

>The main problem is that the servers doing the job are very old and need to
>be replaced; one of them is already failing. However, they all run old
>versions of NetBSD with custom-made drivers supporting custom-made hardware
>to interface with the GPS receiver; the people responsible for the software
>and hardware are long gone from the University. Transferring the software
>into new servers is not a trivial matter -- we'd probably be better off
>scraping them altogether and going to a more standard package, but that
>would involve more work (and money) than we can justify in the current
>climate.

In case someone else is reading this and had an interest in setting up a stratum 1
server, there are off the shelf solutions. The cheapest is a Gamin 18xLVC GPS
receiver, some wiring (soldering in a usb connector and a serial connector) and a
computer with a usb port and a serial port. Then use something like gpsd and ntpd 
 on Linux
( probably also freeBSD) and you have a stratum 1 server with an internal accuracy
of about 4 microseconds). Ie, the hardware is bog standard, and so is the
software. There is these days no need for special hardware or software. 
No reflection on you, but just to let others know that the difficulty is not
large.






>One secondary issue is the traffic cost incurred by the University (and the
>department). We are billed for any incoming traffic not originating from
>research networks, which means that we pay for most NTP requests we
>receive. The amount of traffic has been going up faster than the cost of
>traffic has been coming down, and it makes up a significant part of the
>Internet costs for the School of Engineering.


>Personally, I would love to be able to keep the service running, and it has
>been a recurring subject in internal discussions over at least the last 18
>months. The hardware failures we're starting to see ended up tipping the
>scales towards the decision to turn the service off, sadly.

>-Wilson
>-- 
>Wilson Roberto Afonso                  wafonso at unimelb.edu.au
>Systems Administrator                         +61 3 8344 1271
>IT Services                   Melbourne School of Engineering




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