Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!prls!amdimage!amdcad!decwrl!ucbvax!daemon
From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  voting on the time
Message-ID: <10033@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 19:34:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10033
Posted: Tue Aug 20 19:34:45 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 20:29:54 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 18

From: jsq%tzec.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (John Quarterman)

My assumption was that checking the time of independent hosts should
be more dependable than checking anything on the local host, especially
after a bad crash or operator error.

There are many other things which netdate could do.  Once it's chosen
what it thinks is the set of most accurate hosts, it could take the
RMS average, toss out anything which deviates too far, average again,
and use the result as the time.  It could poll the whole set of accurate
hosts several times when averaging, or it could just poll the single
most accurate host several times and average.  It could notice
the network latency and adjust for it.

I may add some of these things (preferably after wiser heads remark
on which ones would be most useful).  What I wanted to start with
was something simple which could be depended upon to reject truly
bogus times.