Hello Kashif, Kashif Mumtaz Tahir wrote: > Hello folks , > > I just want to ask one question which might be novice. We are > maintaining NTP server and monitoring its Offset, Jitter and Frequency > values for its health check. > > Offset and Jitter we know very well but want to clarify about Frequency > value. What actually it is ? and what is impact of increase/decrease in its > value on NTP server.
The system time on your mainboard is derived from a quartz on the mainboard which generates a clock signal which is more or less off its nominal frequency, so your undisciplined system time would drift more or less depending on how much your quartz is off. This mean native frequency offset depends on the individual quartz, so this varies from one mainboard to the next, even if the board is the same type from the same manufacturer. In addition, the real frequency offset varies with the ambient temperature of the quartz. The temperature can vary inside the PC housing, depending on whether the CPU is idle or busy, and also depending on variations of the room temperature, e.g. when the air condition kicks in. The NTP daemon tries to measure the frequency offset and applies a correction to get the real frequency as close as possible to the nominal frequency. The mean drift correction value depends on the native frequency offset of the individual quartz, and the variations over time depend on the stability of the quartz when the temperature changes. When the quartz frequency changes due to temperature changes then the system time starts to drift, and ntpd needs to adjust the frequency correction to compensate this, so the time offsets and frequency drift are somewhat related. For example, see http://people.ntp.org/burnicki/sample-loopstats/loopstats.2016w11.pdf Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions