Re: [Ntp] SNTP, Old crufty software

[Hal Murray <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] said:
> I remember some years ago when Windows XP/Server 2003 was current, the dumb
> SNTP client (w32time) shipped with that Windows versions sent "peer" requests
> to the NTP server by default, 

Thanks.  Pool servers are still seeing that.  That's the tiny bump on the tail 
that I mentioned.  It's ballpark of 1/2% of the NTPv1 requests.

Do you know what that version of w32time requires for the Mode in a response?  
Will it accept Server?

If nothing else, we need to make a list of the types of v1 requests that are 
being sent and the responses they need.

> Since SNTP basically uses the same packet format as NTP, in my opinion the
> real S(imple) attribute refers to the way the packet exchange is evaluated at
> the client side.

> I've seen implementations where the client didn't even try to compensate the
> network delay, and just used the server's transmission time stamp to adjust
> the client time. Probably because the programmers though that the resulting
> accuracy id "good enough". 

Right.  If all you need is within a second or two, it may not be worthwhile to 
do that admittedly tiny extra calculation.  It's just a couple more lines of 
code to maintain.

I was thinking that we need a section on clocks and networks so people can 
decide how complicated they need to make their "simple" client and/or how 
often they need to poll.

------

Speaking of cruft...  :)

I'm seeing a few v3 and v4 packets with Broadcast Mode.  Anybody know who 
who/what is doing that?  Some of it looks like real traffic: 64 second 
polling, LOCL in the RefID, mostly 0s, looks like a time in the transmit slot.



-- 
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