[time-nuts] can of worms: time-of-day in a community radio station

[David J Taylor]

   I fear that I am developing a reputation for bringing to the list rather 
oddball questions. In my rôle as agent provocateur, therefore, here is 
another such problem.

   Questions for you are at the end. Thanks for your thoughts,.

— Eric
[]
===============================================

Eric,

As others have mentioned, using the reference NTP should do the job with 
margin to spare!

- Windows, use the Meinberg port.  I have some info here:
  https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html

- Linux, NTP is usually installed by default, although it may be a release 
or two behind.  Usually this isn't important.  Use "ntpq -pn" to see whether 
you have it.

- MAC, reference NTP is available (I believe), but you might need to compile 
it.

- For your one stratum-1 server you can use a GPS source would with a 
Raspberry Pi, or even a Windows PC although that won't be quite as good, but 
adequate for 0.01 seconds accuracy.  Some notes here:
  https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-quickstart.html

- For a wall-clock from the Raspberry Pi:
  https://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/DigitalClock.html
  I should really recompile this so that the RPi doesn't have to be rebooted 
when the clocks change, but the compiler/software I used 
(Lazarus/FreePascal) didn't have the required API call at the time.

- using the pool servers for a few PCs is OK, I think, as all the PCs won't 
be hitting the same pool servers.  How many is "a few" - perhaps 20?  Don't 
use "stratum-1" public servers (e.g. time.nist.gov), as they are likely to 
be overloaded and therefore not as accurate as you might expect.  Using the 
"pool" command in NTP and pool servers is likely to be just as good, if not 
better.

I hope that gives you a little more food for thought.

Cheers,
David
-- 
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Email: david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk
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