Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!UDEL.EDU!Mills
From: Mills@UDEL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  NTP implementations
Message-ID: <8812051155.aa21009@Huey.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 88 16:55:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 17

Tom,

The NTP distribution on trantor.umd.edu works fine with both versions 3 and
4 on Sun-2 and Sun-3 systems. However, you have to modify the tickadj variable
in the kernel. For further details, contact ntp@trantor.umd.edu.

While NTP will certainly keep your Ethernet machines within a few milliseconds
of each other, it was not designed to operate indefinitely without outside
reference and may result in random walks far from nominal standard time.
If you never intend to connect your net to the existing NTP subnet or do not
intend to purchase a radio clock of one kind or another, then maybe the
timed system distributed with 4.3bsd would be more appropriate. In principle
it would be possible to use the NIST (ne NBS) telephone-time facility to set
the clock on one of your machines once per day, for example using the Sun
code distributed by NIST, but this would require a little hacking and sawing.

Dave