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From: Christopher-Vance@adfa.oz.au (Christopher JS Vance)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.time.ntp
Subject: synchronizing a LAN-full of machines
Message-ID: <1991May17.042109.28962@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au>
Date: 17 May 91 04:21:09 GMT
Sender: cjsv@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au (Christopher J S Vance)
Organization: Computer Science, Univ. of NSW, ADFA Canberra, Australia
Lines: 20

Situation: We have a campus LAN with a Convex, half a dozen Pyramids,
two dozen Apollos, three or four dozen Suns, and a gaggle of lesser
machines.  We run ntp on one of the Suns, have a timed master on the
same machine and run timed slaves on the Convex, Pyramids, and
Apollos.  The timed master is compiled with MNOADJUST defined to stop
ntp and timed messing each other up (it was a mess till I found the
sources we currently use).

Question: Is there some problem with Sun hardware (we have 3's and
4's) which would stop Sun shipping either ntp or timed?  Why do all
the other machines come with timed?  Do Sun not consider synchrony
important?

Recommendation requested: Should we run a mixed ntp/timed network (as
at present)?  Should we convert to using ntp throughout?  Should we
use some other mechanism to keep our machines in synchrony?  What
overheads are there in running ntp?  Timed?  Do you have a better
suggestion?

-- Christopher