[time-nuts] Recommendations for NTP server

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <Gb7QUsAye$SEFwKA at g8kbz.demon.co.uk>, Geoff Powell writes:

>So you'd recommend a 4501, with FreeBSD in Compact Flash? I wanted to
>use CF anyway, since a box running 24/7 is not the best environment in
>which to have moving parts. The box will have no more that NTP and MRTG
>on it.

There isn't much I can add here, but I just want to add a few things:

Sub-microsecond precision is impossible with regular crystals, end
of story.  You need OCXO or Rb support for that.

If you don't need the SNMP capability, drop MRTG and use RRDtool,
(MRTG's more general sibling).

If you want to run MRTG or RRDtool, you probably do not want to use
a CF card: it will wear out - eventually.  Don't trust more than a
year.

I wrote a hack called "Remote RRD" which sends updates in UDP packets
to another host which hosts the RRD file and web-pages and all that
to get around this problem.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.