Standalone Stratum 1 NTP Server

Majdi S. Abbas msa at samurai.sfo.dead-dog.com
Wed Aug 28 04:43:32 UTC 2002


On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 11:57:39PM -0400, John Todd wrote:
> Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out 
> bunches of these across a network in wide distribution.  (Pardon me 
> if some of you on the list snicker at my reluctance at the $2400 
> price - for some of us the "new, new Econcomy" is making things like 
> NTP Stratum 1 clocks a luxury that The Budgeters doesn't see as 
> necessary, since it's an invisible engineering issue.)

	Is it invisible?  Proper timing is essential.  It's not too
hard to pick a suitable GPS and plug it into a host somewhere if
cost is an issue.

	But, more to the point, you don't need a "wide distribution"
of these boxes.  2 or 3 is more than enough.  I tend to use
my top level routers, or some distributed hosts (dns, authentication,
logging, you name it) to form a stratum 2 mesh, and then have the rest
of your network talk to them.

	A large number of stratum 2 servers talking to each other as 
well as a few stratum 1 clocks will result in a very stable distributed
timesource that can support a whole lot of clients.

	You've already paid for the network, might as well use it.

	--msa



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