[51470] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Standalone Stratum 1 NTP Server
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Majdi S. Abbas)
Wed Aug 28 00:44:10 2002
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 21:43:32 -0700
From: "Majdi S. Abbas" <msa@samurai.sfo.dead-dog.com>
To: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com>
Cc: Mike Lyon <mlyon@fitzharris.com>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <p05100304b99161ffa53c@[172.16.2.77]>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 11:57:39PM -0400, John Todd wrote:
> Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out
> bunches of these across a network in wide distribution. (Pardon me
> if some of you on the list snicker at my reluctance at the $2400
> price - for some of us the "new, new Econcomy" is making things like
> NTP Stratum 1 clocks a luxury that The Budgeters doesn't see as
> necessary, since it's an invisible engineering issue.)
Is it invisible? Proper timing is essential. It's not too
hard to pick a suitable GPS and plug it into a host somewhere if
cost is an issue.
But, more to the point, you don't need a "wide distribution"
of these boxes. 2 or 3 is more than enough. I tend to use
my top level routers, or some distributed hosts (dns, authentication,
logging, you name it) to form a stratum 2 mesh, and then have the rest
of your network talk to them.
A large number of stratum 2 servers talking to each other as
well as a few stratum 1 clocks will result in a very stable distributed
timesource that can support a whole lot of clients.
You've already paid for the network, might as well use it.
--msa
