> On Oct 26, 2017, at 19:29, Chris Caudle <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, October 26, 2017 7:38 pm, Denny Page wrote:
>> If you are going to do PTP with ptp4l, or NTP with Chrony, you are going
>> to want hardware timestamping support on the ethernet phy.
> 
> Or the MAC.  The processor used on BeagleBone Black has timestamping in
> the MAC.  Not quite as accurate as stamping in the phy, but should be a
> relatively consistent fixed offset.


Yes, but it might not be as consistent as you would like. The Intel i210 is a 
pretty good reference. It does mac timestamping and has a built-in phy. At 
100Mb, Intel advertises a timestamp latency range of 984-1024ns for outbound 
packets, and 2148-2228ns for inbound packets. The ranges are a result of mac 
clock issues, unassociated with phy communication.

External measurement shows that the mean values are actually outside the ranges 
given, 1044ns for outbound, and 2133ns for inbound. [I suspect, but don’t know 
for sure, that the offset is a result of a fixed 20ns delay between the phy and 
mac.] Anyway, on a loopback between two i210 instances, you will see an average 
total timestamp latency of 3177ns, with a standard deviation of around 100ns. 
Pretty good, but not that great.

What chip does the BeagleBone Black use? Do they publish specs on the ethernet 
timestamp latency?

Thanks,
Denny

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