Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!super!rminnich
From: rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: VBlank interrupt servers
Message-ID: <719@super.ORG>
Date: 12 Sep 88 17:10:19 GMT
References: <3421@crash.cts.com>
Sender: uucp@super.ORG
Reply-To: rminnich@metropolis.UUCP (Ronald G Minnich)
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Lanham, MD
Lines: 17

How accurate do you need to be? It sounds like what you want is 
equivalent to a distributed time server. If i get this right, you 
need to be higher resolution than vblank, which i guess can go to 
60 hz. which is 16 ms. The ntp demon available for free can do much
better than this. You could use this code as a model. It is a very 
interesting piece of work. It is a distributed, self-organizing system.
If any one host goes nuts it won't drive other hosts to have the wrong time.
I have two uses for it: One, to have the time be accurate on our 
Suns. Two, more important, to keep the suns time in agreement to 
a few milliseconds or so (the limitation i understand is not the 
protocol, but sun hardware). This second use will be very important
to us once we have >100 workstations!
   You might want to take a look. The RFC i have is number QQVV or 
something so i guess it is not a real RFC yet. I can mail it to 
interested parties. Or ftp ntp.tar.Z from trantor.umd.edu. 
ron
P.S. I didn't do any of ntp stuff, but it is a beautiful piece of work!