Recent NTP pool traffic increase

Thu Dec 15 23:07:24 UTC 2016

Quoting Jose Gerardo Perales Soto <gerardo.perales at axtel.com.mx>:
> We've recently experienced a traffic increase on the NTP queries to  
> NTP pool project (pool.ntp.org) servers. One theory is that some  
> service provider NTP infraestructure failed approximately 2 days ago  
> and traffic is now being redirected to servers belonging to the NTP  
> pool project.
>
> Does anyone from the service provider community have any comments?

To add some more numbers to this, I'm seeing 4x the usual NTP traffic  
to my server in pool.ntp.org, starting Dec 13.

Top source ASNs by % of NTP traffic seen by my server (I don't have  
pre-Dec 13 traffic by ASN handy)

sprint 4.0%
verizon-wireless 3.4%
tmobile 2.9%
att-wireless 2.8%
comcast 2.1%
orange 1.8%
sky 1.6%
twc 1.0%
att 1.0%
swisscom 0.9%
saudinet 0.8%
virgin 0.6%
opaltelecom 0.5%
qwest 0.5%
eli 0.2%
verizon 0.2%

Possibly related is the new iOS release.  Does the new iOS generate  
more NTP traffic?  Can anyone measure that?