Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Unruh wrote in message news:x06gm.50657$ph1.37...@edtnps82... [] In case someone else is reading this and had an interest in setting up a stratum 1 server, there are off the shelf solutions. The cheapest is a Gamin 18xLVC GPS receiver, some wiring (soldering in a usb connector and a serial connector) and a computer with a usb port and a serial port. Hardware details for a GPS 18x LVC and serial/USB connections: http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/FreeBSD-GPS-PPS.htm#usb Then use something like gpsd and ntpd on Linux ( probably also freeBSD) and you have a stratum 1 server with an internal accuracy of about 4 microseconds). Ie, the hardware is bog standard, and so is the software. There is these days no need for special hardware or software. No reflection on you, but just to let others know that the difficulty is not large. Would probably work well enough on an existing server or lightly loaded desktop PC. Mine worked on a FreeBSD system with an Intel P133 processor/48MB from about 1995! Anything later should be OK. I'm now running it on three Windows systems (2000, XP and Windows-7), although the performance isn't as good as the FreeBSD system. Wilson - I'm sorry to hear of your problems, particularly the charging issue. Cheers, David ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Or one could get a plug computer like http://www.tonidoplug.com and use a GPS over USB, which works quite well as David proved. I myself am tempted at one such plug computer just for the geek factor! :-) HTH ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
In case someone else is reading this and had an interest in setting up a stratum 1 server, there are off the shelf solutions. The cheapest is a Gamin 18xLVC GPS receiver, some wiring (soldering in a usb connector and a serial connector) and a computer with a usb port and a serial port. Then use something like gpsd and ntpd on Linux ( probably also freeBSD) and you have a stratum 1 server with an internal accuracy of about 4 microseconds). Ie, the hardware is bog standard, and so is the software. There is these days no need for special hardware or software. No reflection on you, but just to let others know that the difficulty is not large. I've been running a Garmin GPS 17HVS into a HP t5710 thin client running FreeBSD for a few years now. Works well enough for my work network purposes and being solid state disk and fanless keeps it from dying. Cheap and effective. _ CDN College or University student? Get Windows 7 for only $39.99 before Jan 3! Buy it now! http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9691636 ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Wilson R. Afonso wafo...@csse.unimelb.edu.au writes: Hello all, The Department of Computer Science of the University of Melbourne has for many years hosted the stratum 1 NTP server at ntp.cs.mu.oz.au. This service is heavily used, with requests coming from all corners of the world; it responds to approximately 500 requests per second on average. This service will be discontinued from 01 January 2010. We no longer have the capability (budget and manpower) to maintain the service in its current state, and rather than letting it degrade and fail, we're bringing it down in a controlled manner. To bad. But I am wondering what the manpower requirements are? You have GPS receivers and they would not seem to me to require must maintainance. We kindly ask that anyone who perchance maintains a publicly available list of NTP servers remove ntp.cs.mu.oz.au and related servers (ntp0, ntp1, ntp2) from that list. We are doing our best to locate maintainers of high-profile lists to get the servers unlisted. A similar request is made of anyone who ships software that includes these servers in a list of possible synchronisation targets. Also, of course, if you manage systems that sync with these servers, we ask that you start using a different system. We atrongly recommend using the services of pool.ntp.org. Thank you for your cooperation. -Wilson -- Wilson Roberto Afonso wafo...@unimelb.edu.au Systems Administrator +61 3 8344 1271 IT Services Melbourne School of Engineering ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Unruh unruh-s...@physics.ubc.ca wrote: Wilson R. Afonso wafo...@csse.unimelb.edu.au writes: The Department of Computer Science of the University of Melbourne has for many years hosted the stratum 1 NTP server at ntp.cs.mu.oz.au. This service is heavily used, with requests coming from all corners of the world; it responds to approximately 500 requests per second on average. This service will be discontinued from 01 January 2010. We no longer have the capability (budget and manpower) to maintain the service in its current state, and rather than letting it degrade and fail, we're bringing it down in a controlled manner. To bad. But I am wondering what the manpower requirements are? You have GPS receivers and they would not seem to me to require must maintainance. We may all be at least idly curious as to the why, but it seems that it would be better to thank Wilson and the University of Melbourne for their service to the community and wish them well. Our's is not to second guess their decision. rick jones -- The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full. The glass has a leak. The real question is Can it be patched? these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway... :) feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH... ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Rick Jones rick.jon...@hp.com writes: Unruh unruh-s...@physics.ubc.ca wrote: Wilson R. Afonso wafo...@csse.unimelb.edu.au writes: The Department of Computer Science of the University of Melbourne has for many years hosted the stratum 1 NTP server at ntp.cs.mu.oz.au. This service is heavily used, with requests coming from all corners of the world; it responds to approximately 500 requests per second on average. This service will be discontinued from 01 January 2010. We no longer have the capability (budget and manpower) to maintain the service in its current state, and rather than letting it degrade and fail, we're bringing it down in a controlled manner. To bad. But I am wondering what the manpower requirements are? You have GPS receivers and they would not seem to me to require must maintainance. We may all be at least idly curious as to the why, but it seems that it would be better to thank Wilson and the University of Melbourne for their service to the community and wish them well. Our's is not to second guess their decision. Agreed. But I am curious, since I do not see much demand on capability to hosting such a server, so the reason he gives is puzzling. It may be that the administration thinks that hosting such a server is a high capabilities job. Or it could be that they lost the person who really knew ntp and noone else feels comfortable supporting it. ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
Re: [ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:34:19 GMT, Unruh wrote: Agreed. But I am curious, since I do not see much demand on capability to hosting such a server, so the reason he gives is puzzling. It may be that the administration thinks that hosting such a server is a high capabilities job. Or it could be that they lost the person who really knew ntp and noone else feels comfortable supporting it. The main problem is that the servers doing the job are very old and need to be replaced; one of them is already failing. However, they all run old versions of NetBSD with custom-made drivers supporting custom-made hardware to interface with the GPS receiver; the people responsible for the software and hardware are long gone from the University. Transferring the software into new servers is not a trivial matter -- we'd probably be better off scraping them altogether and going to a more standard package, but that would involve more work (and money) than we can justify in the current climate. One secondary issue is the traffic cost incurred by the University (and the department). We are billed for any incoming traffic not originating from research networks, which means that we pay for most NTP requests we receive. The amount of traffic has been going up faster than the cost of traffic has been coming down, and it makes up a significant part of the Internet costs for the School of Engineering. Personally, I would love to be able to keep the service running, and it has been a recurring subject in internal discussions over at least the last 18 months. The hardware failures we're starting to see ended up tipping the scales towards the decision to turn the service off, sadly. -Wilson -- Wilson Roberto Afonso wafo...@unimelb.edu.au Systems Administrator +61 3 8344 1271 IT Services Melbourne School of Engineering ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
[ntp:questions] ntp.cs.mu.oz.au going away - 2010-01-01
Hello all, The Department of Computer Science of the University of Melbourne has for many years hosted the stratum 1 NTP server at ntp.cs.mu.oz.au. This service is heavily used, with requests coming from all corners of the world; it responds to approximately 500 requests per second on average. This service will be discontinued from 01 January 2010. We no longer have the capability (budget and manpower) to maintain the service in its current state, and rather than letting it degrade and fail, we're bringing it down in a controlled manner. We kindly ask that anyone who perchance maintains a publicly available list of NTP servers remove ntp.cs.mu.oz.au and related servers (ntp0, ntp1, ntp2) from that list. We are doing our best to locate maintainers of high-profile lists to get the servers unlisted. A similar request is made of anyone who ships software that includes these servers in a list of possible synchronisation targets. Also, of course, if you manage systems that sync with these servers, we ask that you start using a different system. We atrongly recommend using the services of pool.ntp.org. Thank you for your cooperation. -Wilson -- Wilson Roberto Afonso wafo...@unimelb.edu.au Systems Administrator +61 3 8344 1271 IT Services Melbourne School of Engineering ___ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
