> From: "Paul" <[email protected]>
> To: "pool" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 7:44:27 AM
> Subject: Re: [Pool] stratum 2 lists


> Really. Much of ntp.org needs cleaning or purging but since offers to
> assist are ignored this seems like something simple. Just remove the list
> and replace it with a link to the pool which has the advantage of being
> maintained. The OP's real problem is republishing junk. Fortunately it's
> harmless because most soon-to-be pool members will find a better solution.


I don't know about "most". Maybe I just wasn't clever enough to figure this 
out, but I had (wrongly) assumed that "the list" was the preferred means of 
finding good servers, and that using the pool to find upstream servers was not 
recommended but permissible. So I (again wrongly) assumed most pool servers 
would be stratum3. Oops!

> PS. How to answer the OPs problem if you're in the US given this guidance
> "but should configure some good servers
> <http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/StratumTwoTimeServers> manually
> (those servers *may* be chosen from the pool...)".

> $ for j in $(for i in 0 1 2 3;do host $i.us.pool.ntp.org;done|cut -d ' '
> -f4|sort -u|grep '^[0-9]');do ntpdate -dp1 $j|egrep
> '^server|^stratum|^offset';done

> Pick the ones you like from the list you get back.

That indeed gives some decent results, but the problem remains that the first 
suggestion to potential pool joiners is to use a list which has a lot (at least 
270) of defunct servers. I've been a server admin for over a decade, and my 
bash skills are still sorely lacking compared to what you've just done. One of 
my ideas was to create a tool that would allow a user to pick a locale/iso code 
and then give them a randomly chosen list of 5 known working servers from their 
region (taken of course from the list).

Now that I've seen your command, what if the pool site had a way of letting a 
potential pool server operator pick their region, pick a stratum, and then give 
them a list of 10-15 servers to pick from. I'd certainly have been ok with 
something like that (even if I'm a bit OCD sometimes). Or perhaps some guidance 
on easy ways to find good upstream servers from within the pool. I was honestly 
a bit shocked at the ratio of stratum 1 & 2 servers in that query. Only 1 (out 
of 16) was stratum 3.

At any rate, I've communicated directly with Brad, Harlan and the team at 
ntp.org because as long as the stratum 2 list is linked from www.pool.ntp.org 
(and Google for that matter), people will use it, and I want to make it better.

Thanks!
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