Most NTP users use better implementations that NTPd (like chrony)
Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
71–80 of 242 posts
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reference implementation, while historically important, has largely been displaced by more secure/performant implementations (ntpsec, chrony), or by in-house implementations (Amazon, Google). Notably NTPd doesn't support leap-smear, which means those who absolutely must have monotonic time can't use it at all.
> Those who absolutely must have monotonic time ... shouldn’t be using a Unix timestamp, or anything else that’s not a count of SI seconds elapsed since a fixed reference point, to begin with.
Pitch: TAI
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#73That seems very low for such a high profile site/project I donated an amount but the bar didn't move and is at the same level($395) as before my donation
The bar is still at $395. I am suspicious.
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#74I’m confused—why such a small donation amount?
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#75I am surprised that NTP project is not funded, fully or partially, by larger organizations or governments, given the criticality of the project.
I figured they would be funded by NIST, but the way the US government has been pulling back funding for everything, it didn't surprise me that they need money. Much like Jimmy Wales, I bet if everyone donated 5 bucks they'd be in a much better spot.
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#76I refuse to donate.
Trillion dollar companies depend leech on it and yet refuse to spend money on it.
Let it fail and see what happens.
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#77That seems very low for such a high profile site/project I donated an amount but the bar didn't move and is at the same level($395) as before my donation
The bar is still at $395. I am suspicious.
I think someone is manually updating the site to whatever the current donation amount is.
Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#78Rather than money one can donate NTP servers to the pool. [1] It can be a fun learning exercise in setting up a stable stratum-2 time server. One can create graphs from the optional logs.
Why bother? Many of the rabbit holes one could venture down in learning to set up a stable time server can also benefit application servers in terms of latency, responsiveness, learning how to get clients to share resources and so much more. Rather than trying to find cooperative stratum-1 servers, one can start by using each of the Google, Facebook and Apple public stratum-1 servers [2] to get started. They get beat up a lot but most of them are stable most of the time.
Ask your favorite LLM how to set up a public NTP server using NTPD or Chrony. For extra credit play with each of them.
[1] - https://www.ntppool.org/en/join.html
[2] - # grep -E "facebo|goog|appl" /etc/hosts
17.253.16.253 time.apple.com
129.134.28.123 time1.facebook.com
129.134.29.123 time2.facebook.com
129.134.25.123 time3.facebook.com
129.134.26.123 time4.facebook.com
129.134.27.123 time5.facebook.com
216.239.35.0 time1.google.com
216.239.35.4 time2.google.com
216.239.35.8 time3.google.com
216.239.35.12 time4.google.comRe: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Those who absolutely must have monotonic time ... shouldn’t be using a Unix timestamp, or anything else that’s not a count of SI seconds elapsed since a fixed reference point, to begin with.
Pitch: TAI
Kind of. If you “absolutely must” have monotonic time, though, and also care about NTP, then just pointing to TAI (in DJB’s naïve definition) or GPS time is not enough. You need to make decisions on whether you, for example, would prefer your imprecise seconds to be more even individually or for the aggregate count to be more accurate (NTP of course gets you the latter by default). Dear Sir[1], you have done metrology.
[1] https://people.csail.mit.edu/rachit/post/you-have-built-a-co..., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29891428