NTP Server

Sun Oct 24 18:55:35 UTC 2010

> From: Peter Beckman 
> Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 11:33 AM
> To: North American Network Operators Group
> Subject: RE: NTP Server
> 
> On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, George Bonser wrote:
>   It sure would be nice if datacenter facilities offered an
independent
> NTP
>   time source as a benefit for hosting with them.  

One provider I worked with in the past used to offer it but stopped
because customers apparently had a wide variety of expectations on what
that should be.  It turned into a complaint generator when people would
demand stratum 1 or if one of the servers was down for a bit so they
just shut it off.  It provided no benefit as far as they were concerned
and it cost them time, effort, and power to provide it. They reasoned
that the customer could provide their own time servers and own the
issues themselves.

That is probably an exercise in properly setting expectations at the
start, though.  Provide a stratum 3 service and tell people that one of
the sources is subject to disappearing from time to time as a function
of regular maintenance and folks should be fine with that or do it
themselves.