Leap second tonight

Tue Mar 17 06:07:42 UTC 2009

On Dec 31, 2008, at 15:28, Kevin Oberman wrote:

> We use CDMA clocks and last leap second it took weeks for all of the
> cell sites to adjust the last one. As a result, I have set all of our
> clocks for manual leap second and set them to adjust tonight at  
> midnight
> (UTC).I'll take a look in about 35 minutes and see how it worked.

Chiming in a little late here ...

Over at the NTP Pool we had about 9% of the servers not handle the  
leap second accurately; starting at midnight UTC.  After an hour (so  
between 01:00 and 02:00) it was down to about 3%; a couple hours later  
down to about 1% of our servers (a few dozen)[1].  Most of those got  
in order within 24-48 hours.    Interestingly the few who didn't get  
corrected within a few days were, tada: CDMA clocks.

To stay vaguely NANOG on-topic: I believe at least some of our ~1700  
NTP servers are routers; so I'm guessing they handled the leap second  
alright.

Sounds like a "RISKS" lesson: Don't use side-effects of a tool for  
something critical.  (If I understand it right then CDMA uses accurate  
time because it needs accurate frequency; not because it cares what  
time it is).

Also: Who came up with having the leap second on New Year!?  Clearly  
not someone with any operational experience.

  - ask

[1] http://fortytwo.ch/mailman/pipermail/timekeepers/2009/004619.html  
and http://fortytwo.ch/mailman/pipermail/timekeepers/2009/004623.html

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