[ntp:questions] NTP Bug 2328 - Vista/Win7 time keeping inaccurate and erratic

Martin Burnicki martin.burnicki at meinberg.de
Thu Nov 28 09:31:03 UTC 2013


David Taylor wrote:
> I wish I could say it was all fixed in Windows-8, but it /is/ better there.

Windows 8 supports a new API which provides the system time with 
sub-microsecond resolution.

If I remember correctly then Dave Hart has already implemented some code 
in ntpd-dev some time ago which uses this API, if it is available.

This should allow ntpd to compute the difference between the system time 
and some reference time very accurately, without requiring interpolation 
between timer ticks or similar tricks. This is a precondition for 
accurate synchronization of the system time.

On the other hand, as far as I know, there is no new API to apply 
adjustments to the Windows system time more smoothly. The legacy API 
only allows to specify to change the amount of time (in 100 ns units) 
which is added to the system time at every 15.6 ms interval.

I.e., the standard value is 156000, and the clock drift can be changed 
by setting the value to 156001 or 155999. Even these steps are often too 
coarse, so ntpd provides a kind of PWM control which increases the 
adjustment value. E.g. if the required drift compensation is only half 
of what is gained by a +1 increment then ntpd increments the tick 
adjustment for a certain interval, and then decrements it for the same 
interval, resulting in a mean value of +0.5.

Things are even worse if the Windows kernel ignores small adjustments 
below 16. In this case the time synchronization software had to change 
the tick adjustment from 156000 to 156016 or 155984 to cause some effect 
in system time keeping, so the PWM control has to account for this. E.g. 
and apply +16 for a given interval, and then use the original value for 
31 * the same interval to get a mean value of +0.5.

In 31 times of a given interval the clock can drift much more than 
during a single interval only.

In the lower parts of the graphs I've recently posted you can see how 
ntpd applies corrections to change the clock drift.

I don't know if Windows 8 also ignores tick adjustments less than 16, as 
Windows 7 does, but this would probably result in decreased performance 
of the time adjustment accuracy again, and thus limit the advantages 
provided by the new API.


Martin
-- 
Martin Burnicki

Meinberg Funkuhren
Bad Pyrmont
Germany



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