Stupid question.

[Gerald Combs]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Chris Wagner wrote:

> What's the most widely used network time server to sync your clock?

I'm assuming you're referring to public NTP servers.  The more-or-less
"official" list of them is at

    http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.html

IMHO, these days the list translates to "this is a list of time servers
that you shouldn't use, because everyone is pounding on them with NTP
requests."  It seems that no matter what server I pick from the list,
I end up with an unreliable, jittery time source.  For NTP servers,
popular is bad.

I've had much better luck with the following strategy:

  1) 'traceroute -n'  to a server reasonably far away, e.g. www.google.com
     or www.cnn.com.

  2) For each hop in the route, run 'ntpdate -q <hop>' until you find
     a router that responds to NTP queries.

  3) Configure your NTP software to use that address.

Most ISPs enable NTP on their routers and switches to make sure they're
all in sync.  It makes log file analysis and event correlation easier.
It has a side benefit of providing a nice, low-latency NTP source to
their clients.

On a related note, has anyone on the list used a cheap GPS device as a
clock source?  I want my own strata 1 server, dangit.