NTP Broadcasting

[Gunther Schulze]

Has anyone had any luck configuring a Win2K system to get its time from a non-windows source? I'm having trouble getting Win2K boxes to get their time from an HP-UX server which is synched with the Naval Observatory. My HP-UX box is broadcasting via NTP v3. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've been working on this for quite some time without success. Thanks!

[John Bolene]

Good question, I gave up on getting this to work myself many moons ago.

[Gunther Schulze]

Frustrating, isn't it?! You would think that most Stratum 1 servers are running some flavor of Unix. So why can't I get my Unix box (stratum 2) to synch with my Windows boxes?! Sounds kind of "Bill Gatesian" doesn't it. :)

[Fred Martin_1]

Gunther, would you mind posting here, a bullet list outlining the steps needed to get NTP running on HP-UX, so that it takes time from the Naval Observatory? That's something I have been wanting to set up for a while now.

[Ron Cornwell]

Below is how to get the Windows server to query the system. This is what we did because NTP broadcasting can not span subnets.

2.4.1.2 WINDOWS 2000 PROFESSIONAL/SERVER
If the machine is apart of a domain with a Windows2000 Domain Controller, there will not be any installation of components or configuration changes necessary as the W32Time service is pre-configured to obtain it?s time from a W2K Domain Controller.
Here is a list of registry items associated with the W32Time service: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q223/1/84.ASP
If the machine is not apart of a W2K Domain, then you will need to:
Run from command prompt: net stop w32time
Open RegEdit.exe and modify or add the following values:

\HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters\Type=NTP (RegValue is REG_SZ)

\HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters\ntpserver=10.10.10.10 (RegValue is REG_SZ)
Run from command prompt: net start w32time

[Darrell Allen · Accepted solution]

Hi Gunther,

I set up my W2K workstation to use NTP v3 from my HPUX 11.0. I use NetTime available from http://nettime.sourceforge.net/

It's freeware, small, straightforward, can be installed as a service, and you can adjust how often you want to sync the time.

Darrell

[Gunther Schulze]

Howdy Fred. Sure, this is what I do. It's actually pretty easy if you're using SAM.
1. Start SAM and go to the Time area.
2. You'll see two areas: NTP Network Time Sources and NTP Broadcasting. First, you'll want to get your machine synched with the UNNO. Go to the NTP Network Time Sources area.
3. Go to the Actions drop down, and go to Add Remote Server or Peer. Add the IP address or FQN of the server you want to use. You can find these at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/servers.htm
4. Make sure the Server radio button is pushed in. Check the preferred server button, and use the version of NTP the time server uses (most are version 3). Make sure you use a server that's near you and that doesn't require authentication, i.e., a public server from the list at the web site above.
5. Close the window and make sure that the NTP service is running, if not go to Action--->Start NTP.
6. Check to see if you're synchronized by running the line command ntpq -p. This will show the time server you're synchronizing with. If there's an asterisk (*) to the left of the name, you're synchronized! Be patient, this takes some time.
7. After this, you'll want to configure your server to broadcast to your other UNIX clients.

Let me know if it works! :)

[Ron Cornwell]

Fred - Please remember that serving NTP requires resources and you should only point 1 server to a Stratum 1 server and a possibly a second pointing to another Stratum 1 server. Setting up a NTP Architecture requires does take some planning adn should not be setup on the fly.

[Fred Martin_1]

Thanks Ron, what I figured I'd do is set up my HP-UX server to get the time from some place on the internet, outside my network. Then all other hosts on my network would get it from my own HP-UX server.

In that case, they'll be Windows products reading from an HP-UX server, so I would also be interested in the original topic of this thread.

[Gunther Schulze]

Darrell,

Your response is exactly what I've been looking for for over a year. Thanks! I would recommend it to everyone!

[Darrell Allen]

You're welcome. I've been using it for just a few months now and it's worked well. We've got a couple NT 4.0 servers and workstations that's running it too. We only have them syncing every 12 hours but that's plenty for us. I don't know what the network overhead would be if employed extensively and syncing frequently so you probably want to look at that.

Darrell

[Gunther Schulze]

I'll check it out, although I don't think the NTP will cause too much of an issue. I'll use the Agilent product Netmetrix with a LAN probe to take a look at it. Thanks again!

[John Bolene]

Darrell thanks for the info

I am now running that program.
It works great.
I was really getting tired of updating my clock every week or so.

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

Simply use:
http://cws.internet.com/reviews/timesync-swatch.html

[Rory Hammond]

Our solution to this problem was to purchase a lantronix Co box for about $900. It is about the size of a external modem gets time via GPS and of course supports NTP/SNTP and udp time protocols. This little box is our primary time server for NT, HPUX and SUN. The benefit to this was that we did not have to leave our firewall for the time update.

[Bill Hassell]

Just a note about NTP protocol. It is the most efficient LAN protocol there is. O very slow HP-UX box (such as a 710 workstation or E25 computer (25-50 Mhz range) will handle thousands of clients.

The reason is that the fastest any client will ask for time sync is once every 64 seconds (and a packet of 64 bytes). Once the client is within 128ms of accurate time, the client doubles the length of time, and then again and again until the client polls once every 17 minutes.

Thus a small server (ie, network appliance like a firewall or router) can server thousands of clients with virtually no load.