Cal Webster wrote: > On Tue, 2008-11-25 at 09:43 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > [...] >>> What's the best way to determine which of our NTP servers provides the >>> best local clock? <snip> >> Consider that the Garmin GPS18LVC has a pulse per second output and >> costs less than $100 US. If you can site an antenna with a good view of >> the sky, you can have a stratum 1 server of your very own and have the >> time accurate to within a millisecond or less. Note that while the GPS >> is accurate to 50ns or better the process of getting the time into your >> computer may introduce several hundred microseconds of uncertainty. > > Interesting... We'd have to run a long cable though, the computer lab > has no windows and the roof is the most logical place to put an antenna. > I don't think USB will handle that much line loss. It's a single story > section of the building so we're probably talking about 100 meters or so > to get a view of the sky. I'll need a version that can handle the remote > distance. I'll request a purchase but it could be months before we see > it. > > After a bit of googling I found an excellent write-up on how to use one > of these for an NTP server [http://time.qnan.org/ "Using a Garmin GPS 18 > LVC as NTP stratum-0 on Linux 2.6"] >
Your NTP server need not live in a computer room; it can be anywhere that you have a LAN connection! A PC that has been retired from desktop service can be recycled as an NTP server. A "486/33" has more than enough computing power to be an NTP server. You'll probably have to settle for a Pentium because I think the museums have cornered the market in 486s! ;-) Some flavor of Linux would be a good choice of O/S. _______________________________________________ questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
