[comp.protocols.time.ntp] Running NTP at Verdix.Com

karl@Verdix.COM (Karl A. Nyberg) (03/20/91)

I'm setting up NTP here and wanted to check (the documentation said to chose
NTP peers carefully, and since I didn't put ANY in, I figured I'd better
DOUBLE check).  If I've got this set up right (I should be so lucky!), I
should be able to set the date on sarge (a Sun 4/470 - the main server in a
network primarily consisting of various Suns) in its rc.local with:

	/usr/local/etc/ntp -s uunet.uu.net umd1.umd.edu

and then run the ntp demon

	/usr/local/etc/ntpd

So that the other hosts here can get their time from sarge.

I have the following in my /etc/ntp.conf file on sarge:

	precision -6
	server	uunet.uu.net
	server	umd1.umd.edu

While other hosts on the network have similar rc.local entries pointing to
sarge as need be and a ntp.conf file that shows:

	precision -6
	server sarge.hq.verdix.com

This is how I have it set up at the moment on two machines and it seems to
work OK.  (I do get some annoying error message about "udp/ntp: service
unknown; using default 123", but I figure that's because I just edited
/etc/services and haven't rebooted).

++++++++++++++++

Just a couple questions.

Is it OK to use both uunet and umd1?  Are there any others that might be
preferable to use?  Do I have to "register" the use of these facilities in
any way?

Do I need peers?

-- Karl --

louie@SAYSHELL.UMD.EDU ("Louis A. Mamakos") (03/20/91)

Sounds reasonable to me.  Since UUNET is synchronized to UMD1
directly, you might just want to synchronize with them only and not
increase the already heavy load on UMD1 any further.

Unless you are going to redistrubute time to a large number of other
hosts, you should pick a few normally stratum-2 servers, like UUNET
and one or two other stratum-2 machines to peer with.  That will
reduce the load on the stratum-1 servers which are already
over-burdened with too many peers.  The sychronization paths are too
heavily concentrated at the stratum-1 servers.

louie

jerry@olivey.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Jerry Aguirre) (03/27/91)

In article <9103192032.AA09380@sayshell.umd.edu> louie@SAYSHELL.UMD.EDU ("Louis A. Mamakos") writes:
>
>Sounds reasonable to me.  Since UUNET is synchronized to UMD1
>directly, you might just want to synchronize with them only and not
>increase the already heavy load on UMD1 any further.

I have monitored uunet.uu.net for quite a while.  It does not keep good
time being usually some large fraction of a second off.  Its NTP daemon
seems to know this but be unable to correct the local time to less than
1 second accuracy.  I assume this represents some problem with the
hardware or kernel.  The other systems at uunet don't seem to run NTP.

On the other hand for most people who are happy with the right second it
is probably good enough.