> In the ARC review of the GNOME system tools project this week, one
> of the issues raised was the hardcoded list of public NTP servers
> used in the Date & Time panel.
>
> I suggested both that a better default was pool.ntp.org and that
> the good community citizen thing to do would be to have Sun provide
> servers to the ntp pool as well as using them. Digging a bit
> further into the stats on http://www.pool.ntp.org I noticed that
> there seems to be low coverage in some places where there are
> active OpenSolaris User Groups. For instance, these areas have
> one or more OSUG's listed on the user group community on opensolaris.org,
> but few ntp pool servers listed:
>
> China cn.pool.ntp.org (2)
> India in.pool.ntp.org (0)
> Australia au.pool.ntp.org (20)
> Argentina ar.pool.ntp.org (3)
> Brazil br.pool.ntp.org (5)
> Venezuela - none
> Turkey tr.pool.ntp.org (1)
>
> Would it make sense to have the various worldwide user groups
> work with their local Sun offices to set up local NTP pool servers
> so that their local user community can get better time service?
>
> [Disclaimer: this is just an idea I had - I cannot commit the local
> Sun offices to doing this, but for the cost of a bottom-end Ultra 20
> and a little bandwidth, it would seem to be a fairly low cost
> community outreach/benefit they could be providing. Or perhaps a
> low-end rack mount server with one zone running the NTP pool service
> and another running a web site or other services for the User Group.]
>
I have been running and tracking my ntp server for quite some time and I
can tell you that one may achieve decent accuracy as a strata 3 server
with an old Netra T1 AC105 unit. Its 1U in the rack, low power, dirt
cheap, runs Solaris 10 Update 2 and no where near the cost of a Ultra 20.
http://www.blastwave.org/ntpstats/index.html
Perhaps it would be a good idea to do more than just provide yet another
strata 3 server set but perhaps go the next step and setup radio tuned
NTP servers or HP/Agilent model 5071A cesium based NTP servers.
The HP 5071A is a somewhat expensive way to go and it would require that
the operator be conversant with the calibration procedures and have
access to a reference service. A decent GPS based clock will ensure
about 1 ms of accuracy over time so long as the military does not
make any more changes to the GPS services.
In any case, I think that creating a few NTP pool servers is a good idea
but more strata 3 servers hardly help. At least a strata 2 server would
be needed I think.
--
Dennis Clarke
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