> Louis, > > This isn't the place to debate your apparent general view that most > waste and inefficiency can be explained by the profit motive. But > let's look at the specific case in hand. The situation (as both of > us describe it) would have the ISPs be able to reduce costs. (Whether > they pass those cost savings on to the customer to increase market > competitiveness or keep it as additional profit margins makes no > different for this case, either way the ISPs benefit from providing > NTP service to their customers). > > It may be true that the big carriers want ISPs to behave wastefully, > but that still wouldn't explain their behavior. First of all, my ISP > is a big carrier (Verizon). So nobody with any influence on my > connectivity has an interest in me (flat rate payer) wasting > resources. Second of all, a smaller ISP doesn't need to depend on > its provider to learn about or implement NTP service. Believe me, I > had no encouragement from Verizon to use NTP properly, but still I do > so. Your claim would only make sense if the big carriers really were > in a position to effectively withhold information about NTP from > their customers (the ISPs). > > So I am inclined to go with others' suggested answers to the puzzle. > That ISPs figure that the cost of addition connections upstream from > not providing NTP services for their customers is less than the cost > (maintenance, support) of providing NTP services. > > If that is the case, then it becomes harder to persuade the ISPs to > "do the right thing". But if it is just incompetence, then we have > an easier task, since persuading them to do the right thing coincides > with persuading them to do something that improves their profits.
Yeah, I am pretty sure that most ISPs believe it is not worth their time to provide NTP service to customers. Given that it is expensive to hire clueful people, they are probably correct. Besides, the NTP pool project is fun, right? So if all ISPs provided their own NTP service, there would be no need for us to exist :). Rusty _______________________________________________ timekeepers mailing list [email protected] https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers
