[ntp:questions] Number of Stratum 1 & Stratum 2 Peers

Harlan Stenn stenn at ntp.org
Sat Dec 13 00:36:22 UTC 2014


William Unruh writes:
> On 2014-12-12, Harlan Stenn <stenn at ntp.org> wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > I think you are seeing the correct and expected behavior.
> >
> > The root cause here is that the majority of the upstream servers are
> > *incorrectly* not advertising the leap second.
> >
> > There have been problems before where a misconfigured server has
> > incorrectly advertised a non-existent leap-second, and in cases where
> > folks had an adequate number of correctly configured servers, this
> > mistake was properly ignored.
> >
> > I have not been closely following this thread, so I might be missing
> > something.
> >
> > It's pretty easy to download and install a leapsecond file, and ntpd
> > will pay attention to that...
> >
> > Or am I missing something?
> 
> Yes, That it was an example of a case in which the correct time server
> could be declared a falseticker. The answer you give "never use sources
> which might not deliver the correct time" does not obviate the point. 
> The concept of "falseticker" and of "bad time" are not the same thing. 

Nobody is saying "never use sources which might not deliver correct time."

Aside from that:

- what is the effective difference between a falseticker and a server
that provides "bad time"?

- Is this difference really significant?

- If so, how can ntpd determine the difference between a falseticker and
a server that provides "bad time"?

- what real benefits does one get from knowing the difference?

I'm sure a few more questions can come up, but I'm more interested in
seeing if there might be something useful going on here, other than
coming up with more issues that NTF's nascent Certification and
Compliance programs should watch for.
-- 
Harlan Stenn <stenn at ntp.org>
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!

 


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