Eric,
As confirmed by experiment, having each client average all the others is
not a good idea. The ensemble tends to do a random walk and display very
poor statility. Better to pick one of them and let it time the rest.
However, folks have tended to extend this idea to provide a multiple
backup capability. This is a bad idea, as evil timing loops can form
that take a long time to count to infinity.
There is a new wrinkle designed for isolated configurations with
multiple backup requirements. It is called orphan mode and works best
with broadcast/multicast networks or networks with multiple
symmetric-mode networks. The networks self-organize, elect a leader and
pecking order depending on the particular failure topology. It's been
tested here in the ntp-dev version, but should still be considered
experimental. See the documentation on the authentication options and
miscellaneous commands pages in the online documentation.
Dave
Eric wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 14:19:11 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco Molteni)
wrote for the entire planet to see:
Say I don't know if a clock is better than the other, so by configuring
B and C to use A as server I risk to have a not so good time if A is
unreliable.
Can I configure A,B,C to peer with each other in a meshed fashion, so
to have each clock influenced by all the others?
The general feeling on this ng is that this is not a good application
for NTP.
I would go further, and say it is a poor design using any type of
software. Sure, you may get some weird approximation of the average
clock errors around your network, but it will still drift, by an
unknown amount.
Three PCs, all of which don't know the time, can't really help each
other find it.
- Eric
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