Re: [Ntp] Hard NO: Re: WGLC - draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv5-requirements

[Miroslav Lichvar <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 03:16:29AM -0800, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> The core "mission" of NTP is time synchronization with a (well) defined
> response to a "time impulse".  This is the reason why previous NTP
> specifications have included the algorithms.  Prof. Mills and some others
> have done a LOT of testing to ensure reliable and predictable behavior of
> time synchronization, in the "normal" and "time impulse" cases over a very
> wide range of circumstances.

If the RFC 5905 PLL+FLL is so great, why is nothing using it, not even
the "reference" implementation in default configuration?

ntpd in default configuration has a poor response with longer polling
intervals. It suffers from oscillations, which can be sometimes seen
even on monitoring graphs of pool.ntp.org. Nobody seems to care. Maybe
it's a bug, but after so many years I think we can conclude that
Internet will not break if all NTP implementations don't have the
"well defined" response.

Different algorithms work better in different conditions. NTP
should be able to reach best performance in any conditions, so it must
not restrict the algorithms.

-- 
Miroslav Lichvar