NTP Pool Project Reaches 500 Servers

flok writes "Finally after 3 years the NTP Pool project has reached 500 servers! The NTP pool project tries to be an accurate and free time-source to every internet-connected device. Everybody who's system has running an NTP daemon which can give an accurate time-indication can join the project. Not only is it handy to have accurate time on your workstation to be able to see when you need to leave the house to catch the train in time, it is also usefull to be able to accurately correlate events between your system and others in case one gets hacked."

Comments

Trains aren't that reliable

[Ithika]

And what makes sure the trains are on time?

Re:New Way uses HW

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean by "finally working"? It's been working for ages, I've been using public NTP servers much before I found about pool.ntp.org.

Besides, what a GPS receiver gives you is a stratum 1 host. What are you going to do, get a receiver per machine? Of course not, you connect it to one box with a NTP server, and make the rest synchronize with it.

Perhaps the usefulness of public NTP servers is somewhat less now, but they're still good to have. I'm sure at many companies buying a GPS receiver could be complicated, even though accurate time is a very, very nice thing to have these days.

Re:New Way uses HW

[cswiger2005]

GPS does indeed make a wonderful external time reference, and many stratum-1 NTP timeservers are using it.

Of course, most machines locked in a rack in a hosting facility don't have even the slightest chance of seeing enough sky to lock onto GPS, so it's safe to say that NTP's death or obsolesence is premature to announce just yet. :-)

--
-Chuck

PS: O Slashdot wizards, why does Slashdot's posting filter claim ntpq output is lame?
It's a conspiracy, I tell you, to force me to write more text!
Bah, that doesn't work, the lameness filter doesn't like a line filled with "=" signs at all, even if I use an <ecode> tag.

Re:New Way uses HW

[tpgp]

Supposedly, if you need an accurate timebase, you are supposed to just use GPS (which gives the exact time) instead of relying on a complicated clock protocol.

Unless your data center is inside a shielded room / underground / in the center of your building.

It is great that NTP is so widely distributed. It is typical that at the moment the old technology is finally working, there is an altogether better solution.

Its not a better solution - its a better solution in some cases.

NTP has the massive advantage of working anywhere you have a network connection and not requiring expensive hardware (GPS hardware you can attach to a PC & match the reliability of NTP is not your yum-cha $75 GPS unit)

Stratums

[bsd4me]

It would also be nice if ISPs would set up their own pools (and advertise them) so clients wouldn't have to go off network, and then if end-users would would set up their own pool for their networks. Not every machine that needs accurate time has to be at stratum-2 or stratum-3, especially workstations. The NTP Pool website makes it look like it is a good idea if every machine on a network syncs to the NTP Pool, instead of setting up internal servers, which is how NTP is really designed to work.