On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:20:35 +0200 (EET), Pekka Savola <pekkas@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, I've always been a little worried about NTP. The US military runs well-publicized and well-used NTP servers, and they wouldn't be doing what we pay them to do if they weren't ready to slip somebody a bad packet when duty calls.
The US military isn't the only group that runs NTP servers. They keep time because they *have* to. GPS (among other things) depends on it. We simply ask them what time it is because they happen to know. Conspiracy theories aside, NTP is robust enough to react sanely when "slipped" a "bad packet"--not to mention the dubious tactical usefulness of telling the general public the wrong time.
NTP does time synchronization. It isn't designed to keep the clocks accurate, it's designed to keep them synchronized. "Accurate" really is defined by the user as far as time sync is concerned. You set up a master time server, and it is definitive of accurate for your domain--everyone else syncs off of it.
If your organization REALLY needs to know what the correct time is, and REALLY can't depend on any external entity (like the evil US empire), then your organization REALLY needs to run its own atomic clock. NTP will allow it. NTP isn't the problem.
