[time-nuts] Looking for advice to get a submillisecond setup

[David J Taylor]

Hi,

My university would like to have a <1ms precise source of time to do
some networking experiments (measure one way propagation delays
etc...). So I wandered on the internet to find the best choice with a
budget of ~1000€ (~1100 American dollars).
I've been overwhelmed by the number of possibilities (atomic
clocks/GPS signal etc...) and as no price appear on the seller
websites, it's difficult to rule out options.

I hope it's within the scope of the mailing list but I would like some
advice on good hardware with the previous constraint (budget ~ 1100 $,
precision < 1ms).
[]
I wonder if we should buy a specific box or if we could not plug the
antenna to a linux box with gpsd/NTPd on it ?

Any advice ?

Best regards
Matt
_______________________________________________

Matt,

As others have said, adding a GPS/PPS device to an existing Linux box should 
be fine (if you can find one with a COM port these days!).  Here are some 
performance measurements - you can see that even with the low-power and 
low-cost Raspberry Pi you can get sub ten microsecond results easily:

  http://www.satsignal.eu/mrtg/performance_ntp.php

>From those plots, you can see that even the Windows 8.1 boxes with a PPS 
source would meet your needs.  There is a quick-start guide for the 
Raspberry Pi here:

  http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-quickstart.html

Cheers,
David
-- 
SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
Email: david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk