Ravinder.Chandhok@CS.CMU.EDU (Rob Chandhok) (10/13/90)
Archive-name: mac-ntptime/11-Oct-90 Original-posting-by: Ravinder.Chandhok@CS.CMU.EDU (Rob Chandhok) Original-subject: NTP on the Mac Archive-site: gnome.cs.cmu.edu [128.2.254.185] Archive-directory: /usr/chandhok/public Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) Well, go out of town for a week and what do you know comes up? Lots of mail about ntp... Regarding NTP on the Mac, I ported a particular ntp application from unix to the Mac as an MPW tool. "ntptime" syncronizes your Mac's clock via ntp, but doesn't do it continuously, like a unix ntp demon would. About using other time protocols (like UDP time and whatever) that ntp is much more robust and accurate. In fact, ntp is somewhat overkill for the 1/60th second resolution of the mac clock. I understand some AppleTalk based protocol should be used so MAc's don't have to depend on IP hosts for time information, but the fact of the matter is that there is an already existing extremely accurate hierarchy of time servers on the internet. Also, you could easily make a Mac into an ntp server, and just use DDP instead of UDP. Regarding the statement (from Pete Resnick?) that "the math is too hard for ntp", if anyone would like to implement a better form of ntp for the mac (cdev or init) then please take my sources! John Pane and I figured out how to convert from Mac time to ntp's notion of time. The rest of it is just getting and sending packets. ntp sources are copyright but usable for non-commercial use, that's how I got mine. The sources live on host gnome.cs.cmu.edu, in file /usr/chandhok/public/macntp/ntpsrc1.2.sit.hqx As mentioned before, do a "cd /usr/chandhok/public" after you log in as anonymous. You won't be able to connect to /usr/chandhok. All I want is for the copyright notices,etc., to be kept in the files. Maybe someday MacTCP will have ntp support also! So, let me know who is going to implement the next version :-) ! Rob