4 ms·

FYI: The delay is simply a function of your network connection. When discussing your satisfaction with an ntp daemon the delay to upstream servers is as releva

by dfc 10y ago

FYI: The delay is simply a function of your network connection. When discussing your satisfaction with an ntp daemon the delay to upstream servers is as relevant as your $/kwh on your electric bill. Has your computer ever selected one of the apple servers to be the truechimer? I always thought the apple servers were kind of crappy.

homero 10y ago
Yeah the Microsoft servers are much better
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Has your computer ever selected one of the apple servers to be the truechimer? The OpenBSD ntpd implementation doesn't strive for perfection, rather for "good enough". So its selection algorithm might not meet with Mills' approval. OpenBSD frequently selects one of the Apple servers. Previously I've seen about 12 or 14 different Apple NTP servers being returned by DNS, including places like Singapore and London. Recently, Apple has changed this and now presents about 4 or 5 different servers. As of this moment, my firewall in Oregon is using an Apple NTP server in NYC as its truechimer: 17.253.14.253. The delay to some of the far-flung Apple servers is well over 100 ms, but the jitter to them is usually quite low, often below about 3 ms. I would agree that delay isn't that relevant, but it intertwines with jitter. In this case, whatever the network topologies that are involved, the jitter usually stays low. Apple's network/peering with Comcast is pretty good in that regard. As for Microsoft NTP servers (someone responded to you about that), I've previously had bad luck with them. time.windows.com resolves to something at Akamai, and it has been very hit or miss. Often not responding. Often being 100 ms off from other servers. I don't keep time.windows.com in my ntpd config file even though I use Microsoft software and thereby am somewhat "entitled" to use it. I don't know if Akamai has upped its game in recent years. Recently I've seen 131.107.13.100 show up as part of the US NTP pool. This is time-nw.nist.gov, which is a stratum 1 hosted by Microsoft in Redmond. My experience is that server is almost invariably running about +8 ms from most other servers I'm using. This despite the latency being very low, usually around 20 ms. I'm happy to keep using it as part of the pool, but I don't see how it is any better than the other servers out there.

by dfc 10y ago

homero 10y ago

Yeah the Microsoft servers are much better

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

Has your computer ever selected one of the apple servers to be the truechimer? The OpenBSD ntpd implementation doesn't strive for perfection, rather for "good enough". So its selection algorithm might not meet with Mills' approval. OpenBSD frequently selects one of the Apple servers. Previously I've seen about 12 or 14 different Apple NTP servers being returned by DNS, including places like Singapore and London. Recently, Apple has changed this and now presents about 4 or 5 different servers. As of this moment, my firewall in Oregon is using an Apple NTP server in NYC as its truechimer: 17.253.14.253. The delay to some of the far-flung Apple servers is well over 100 ms, but the jitter to them is usually quite low, often below about 3 ms. I would agree that delay isn't that relevant, but it intertwines with jitter. In this case, whatever the network topologies that are involved, the jitter usually stays low. Apple's network/peering with Comcast is pretty good in that regard. As for Microsoft NTP servers (someone responded to you about that), I've previously had bad luck with them. time.windows.com resolves to something at Akamai, and it has been very hit or miss. Often not responding. Often being 100 ms off from other servers. I don't keep time.windows.com in my ntpd config file even though I use Microsoft software and thereby am somewhat "entitled" to use it. I don't know if Akamai has upped its game in recent years. Recently I've seen 131.107.13.100 show up as part of the US NTP pool. This is time-nw.nist.gov, which is a stratum 1 hosted by Microsoft in Redmond. My experience is that server is almost invariably running about +8 ms from most other servers I'm using. This despite the latency being very low, usually around 20 ms. I'm happy to keep using it as part of the pool, but I don't see how it is any better than the other servers out there.