On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Andrew Benham wrote:
> I'm also not clear how NTP would cope in the situation where the MAC layer
> could delay the packet's transmission by many seconds.
I know NTP is designed to cope with fair amounts of network delay; it's
built into the protocol. Of course, I don't remember how, as I haven't
looked at the protocol details in many years, but it's in there. Dunno if
it would be robust enough to handle the huge delays you can see on a 1200
baud packet radio connection. (Look! I almost made the thread relavent to
the group! :-) )
NTP is designed to keep your time within milliseconds of it's source, and
can handle silly things like leap seconds, where a minute is declared to
have 61 seconds or 59 seconds to deal with minute changes in the Earth's
orbit. It can also deal with the loss of a clock and a "false ticker," a
clock that reporting incorrect data, given enough alternate inputs.
I use xntpd on my home system, with it treating it's own clock as a
stratum 7 time device, and when my Internet connection's up, using two
stratum 2 time sources on the net. I like it a lot, although I realize
it's more than some people want.
Bob N2KGO
