NTP

The Internet has many NTP servers that can be used to synchronize the time of networks and computers. Most provide a service completely free of charge. So why do organizations need to seriously consider buying a dedicated NTP appliance? Dedicated hardware time references installed locally, within an organization, provide a number of advantages over Internet […]

By implementing a few best practice principles, organisations can attain robust and reliable timing for their network infrastructure: Install 3 or more redundant Stratum 1 NTP servers. Configure lower stratum clients with at least 3 higher stratum servers. Peer lower stratum devices to share time. Secure NTP communications with authentication. Employ Stratum 1 servers that […]

NTP can be installed and configured on Linux in a few simple steps: Install the NTP service. Modify the NTP configuration file, ‘/etc/ntp.conf’, with required options. Add reference clock peers to the configuration file. Add drift file location to the configuration file . Add optional statistics directory to the configuration file . Enable and start […]

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a standard Internet Protocol (IP) for synchronizing the time of computer clocks over a network. The protocol can be used to coordinate the real time clocks of computers and networked devices to within a few milliseconds of UTC. NTP timestamps are transmitted and received using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) […]

A Stratum 1 Time Server is a network appliance that receives precise time from a hardware reference clock to provide a time resource to client computers. Network Time Protocol (NTP) implements a hierarchical system of time references. The stratum, or hierarchy level, represents the distance of a time server from the source reference clock. At […]

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a client-server protocol. A client computer periodically requests timing information from a NTP server. The server responds to requests with timing information that the client can then use for synchronization purposes. Most operating systems have built-in tools to allow computers to automatically synchronize their system clock. For most deployments, the […]