I just wanted to get some thoughts about using a dedicated NTP appliance as opposed to just getting a server get the time off the internet. I am planning on using this device on my company's network to synchronize PCs, employee timeclocks, as well as regular clocks.
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NTP Services.
- Thread starter Keiichi
- Start date
I take it you're not running a windows domain? DCs act as NTP servers.
I know, I just don't trust computer clocks.
GPS is the way to go, but as has been said you'll need an external antenna. This also introduces a single point of failure - if that dies you're back to your servers local clock.
IMHO the only reason not to use Internet time sources is that you don't have Internet access from your server or you require an extremely accurate time source for, say, scientific purposes or machine control.
I don't know about Windows, but the reference implementation of NTP (http://www.ntp.org) allows for multiple sources. If you pick your time sources well (i.e. close to you in terms of round trip time, stratum 1 if you have a lot of hosts, stratum 2 if it's only a few 100) you should get .1 to .01s accuracy. You're only points of failure there would be the server and your internet connection which I'm sure would cause enough of a problem for people to notice and put the effort into fixing.
IMHO the only reason not to use Internet time sources is that you don't have Internet access from your server or you require an extremely accurate time source for, say, scientific purposes or machine control.
I don't know about Windows, but the reference implementation of NTP (http://www.ntp.org) allows for multiple sources. If you pick your time sources well (i.e. close to you in terms of round trip time, stratum 1 if you have a lot of hosts, stratum 2 if it's only a few 100) you should get .1 to .01s accuracy. You're only points of failure there would be the server and your internet connection which I'm sure would cause enough of a problem for people to notice and put the effort into fixing.
Yeah, echoing snowbee. There's no reason not to use your DCs as your NTP servers in your domain. Have the PDC sync with time.nist.gov or the like and you're set. You shouldn't get even a second off the official time, especially if you tweak it to sync every hour. The only reasons to use a different source would be no internet access or scientific applications.
We have a GPS timeclock where I work, technically it's a BITS clock that connects via a DS0 into our softswitch to provide a timing source to the switch which in turn provides timing to all other circuits connecting to the softswitch (DS0, DS1, DS3's...etc). The BITS clock has a license for an NTP server, the company threw it in when we purchased ours. While internet time would work fine for all of my servers it's nice to have a highly accurate Stratum 2 server to pull from, however, over time all of our equipment builds a drift reference so even if no atomic clock is available the systems would do fine for a few days without any really noticeable drift.