I'm pretty sure that NTP is not on the ISPs' radar for bandwidth
consumption. A properly synced NTP client consumes under 10kbytes / day.
Even a deranged client sending one request a second is using under 10
megabytes / day. That's nothing compared to spam, or viruses, or pr0n.
Heck, my pool server is only consuming on average 25 megabytes / day to
serve time. It's nothing.
The reason we want NTP closer to the edges is that it provides better
time accuracy. But it's a pain for ISPs to run proper NTP servers, so
they don't. And frankly, most people don't need sub-500ms accuracy.
I think Apple's solution is the best; run their own servers with some
very simple geographic partitioning. pool.ntp.org is essentially the
same service for the world and it makes me smile to know Debian and
Ubuntu users know what time it is thanks to us. It's all working fine.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
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
_______________________________________________
timekeepers mailing list
[email protected]
https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers
