Dave Hart wrote:
As I understand it, all POSIX ntpd will step backward one second to accomplish a leap second insertion (we've yet to see a deletion). Windows ntpd differs, and is closer to Google's smeared timescale in spirit. Leap seconds are inserted by Windows ntpd by slewing the clock for 2 seconds, that is, the clock is run at half speed for two seconds. The Windows ntpd code doesn't yet accommodate leap second deletions. The advantage of this approach is time moves unceasingly forward. The disadvantage, particularly with such a short-lived smear, is that interval timing that starts or ends during the special two seconds will be inaccurate by up to a second.
Google's hack is to use a cos() function to smear the time delta, this means that as long as they do the smearing over a sufficiently long time period all client systems would stay in sync from start to end.
The key requirement is to keep the frequency delta well below the 500 ppm which is the maximum ntp slew rate, and since many systems need 50-200 ppm under stable conditions, I'd like to limit the additional delta to 100 pm or so.
This would require 10000 seconds with linear slew, but lead to frequency steps at both ends. Since Google used a cos() function they avoid any step functions, but need to increase the time period by pi/2.
15.7 K seconds is still only 4+ hours, so if Google used the last 12 hours of the day they would keep the slew rate at around 35 ppm.
Terje -- - <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no> "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching" _______________________________________________ questions mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
