On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Apr 9, 2007, at 2:30 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Chuck Swiger wrote: > > Normally I am a big believer in "follow the money" for trying to understand > odd practices. But in this case, I really think that we have more of a case > of "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". > > Most traffic by the customers of ISPs is covered under a flat rate. As long > as that is the case, then there is no incentive for ISPs to try to get those > customers to move more data. Indeed, it is exactly the opposite effect. It > is in the interest of those ISPs to have their customers under-use their > connections. > > So I think that if ISPs understood how NTP was supposed to work, they would > provide the service to their customers. That would save the ISP money. > > I also think that there is some continental differences. I get the > impression that NTP is better understood and deployed in Europe than in North > America. > > While ISPs really should be the solution to problem, some vendors (well Apple > at least) have default NTP on the systems that they sell to use Apple's NTP > servers. Other big vendors should do the same, but really it's the ISPs that > should figure out that it's in their interest to do this properly. > > NTP server information can be passed by DHCP (though I don't know what > clients actually respect that). So end-user configuration shouldn't be a > problem for the vast majority of end users. > > What I struggle with is that we have a situation where the protocols are in > place, the tools are in place, and the root of the system is in place. It is > in everybody's narrow individual interest to do the right thing, yet so many > people (many of whom really should know better) simply do the wrong thing. > > -j
Of course, incompetence is a big factor. But incompetence is encouraged when one can make more money. I agree that ISPs with flat rates would benefit by hosting their own ntp servers. But who is going to tell them ? Certainly not the big carriers that provide internet connectivity to those ISPs because the big carriers do not sell bandwidth to the ISPs on a flat rate basis. So like in many cases, incompetence should be encouraged by the big carriers ( the top of the pyramid ) because they sell more bandwidth this way. Of course, in the end, when we waste, its always the end consumer that ipays. When wasting, money is simply transferred from the consumer pocket to people on top of the pyramid, this is why those people are usually pretty rich ;-) Nothing is free, when a packet goes through the net, it costs money and somebody makes profit. Louis _______________________________________________ timekeepers mailing list [email protected] https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers
