David,

Something like this was done in NTPv3 (xntpd) and it turned out to be a bad idea. The poll interval is determined by the time constant, which for PPS and other low-stratum sources is relatively small. If a backup is switched in at a poll interval much larger than this, it takes awhile for the time constant and backup poll interval to stabilize and meanwhile the Nyquist limit is exceeded. In NTPv3 this sometimes resulted in an evil twitch until things calmed down.

It gets worse in the general case where sources of unequal stratum are configured. The algorithms can result in more than one stratum survivor is present and the combine algorithm uses them all. They must all run the same poll interval or evil twitches can result. All in all, to do what you suggest requires an intricate evaluation of what already is a complicated and fragile algorithm, so this might not happen soon.

Dave

David J Taylor wrote:

"Edward T. Mischanko" <etm1962@....> wrote in message news:[email protected]...

I am using GPS with PPS as my primary time source. I don't want to set my back-up network servers to minpoll 10 in the configuration because if the GPS ever fails the servers would be fixed at minpoll 10. I propose an enhancement to the current NTPD functions: Have NTPD automatically set network clocks to minpoll 10 when using a stratum 0 clock as a time refference. This would cut network traffic and server load while still allowing a minpoll 6 setting or lower in the configuration to be used if the refference clock ever fails.


I like and support that suggestion.

David
_______________________________________________
questions mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions


_______________________________________________
questions mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions

Reply via email to