[ntp:questions] ntp server pool advice

Terje Mathisen "terje.mathisen at tmsw.no" at ntp.org
Tue Dec 27 21:53:58 UTC 2011


Rob wrote:
> Terje Mathisen<"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no">  wrote:
>> ntp is by design load-balanced: You enter a bunch of servers for each
>> client, the client will then monitor each server and decide which is
>> currently performing best, sync to this one, while keeping the rest as
>> backup/sanity check.
>
> This is not load-balancing.  This is normally called redundancy or
> failover or similar.
> Load-balancing is distributing a large request load evenly over multiple
> servers, and that is not what ntp is doing when you configure multiple
> servers.

Not for just 4 or 6, but if you have a lot and configure them with 
'preempt' then you will end up with a smaller active set, consisting of 
(mostly) better servers, right?

However, even without this feature, simply listing all 6/8 servers, 
from both ends of the country, will normally result in ntpd figuring out 
which servers are better, and then dropping the rest very quickly back 
to poll 1024.

I.e. geographic load balancing without having to setup different 
ntp.conf files for each group of clients.

Terje
-- 
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"



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