ntpq questions

[Tom Dawson]

All,

Below I have listed the output from two "ntpq -c readlist" comamnds. The first, I contacted our local Cisco router that we use for time service. The second, I contacted the Navy's site. Note the difference in the "reftime" values. This causes me to ask two questions:

1. Is the "reftime" value what is actually returned from the time server I contact?
2. The time on my server seems to be staying fairly accurate. Despite the approximately 13 minute difference with our local Cisco router. Is ntp contacting stratum 4,3, etc... servers to keep my servers' time accurate?

Thanks,
Tom
--------------------------------------------
flo1q03 /homeroot # ntpq -c readlist 180.155.11.1
status=0600 leap_none, sync_ntp, no events, event_unspec
system="cisco", leap=00, stratum=5, rootdelay=303.99,
rootdispersion=115.40, peer=35649, refid=frmarv03e00.frco.com,
reftime=c17f8d69.5248ae5b Fri, Nov 15 2002 10:12:41.321, poll=10,
clock=c17f904f.c3cc440f Fri, Nov 15 2002 10:25:03.764, phase=-29.157,
freq=-104.64, error=43.33

flo1q03 /homeroot # ntpq -c readlist tick.usnogps.navy.mil
status=04f4 leap_none, sync_uhf_clock, 15 events, event_peer/strat_chg
system="HP-UX", leap=00, stratum=1, rootdelay=0.00, rootdispersion=0.05,
peer=38796, refid=USNO,
reftime=c17f904e.139eb000 Fri, Nov 15 2002 10:25:02.076, poll=4,
clock=c17f9053.699f8000 Fri, Nov 15 2002 10:25:07.412, phase=0.002,
freq=16962.83, error=0.05

[Ron Kinner]

Some Cisco routers have their own internal clock which is used at boot to set the clock. It appears that this one needs to be reset. The global config command:

ntp update-calendar

will cause the router to set its internal clock to the current NTP time and keep it there. See if you can talk your routing guy into adding it. I believe that will get rid of the difference you are seeing.

The command:

sh cal

will show the current time per the router's internal clock.

sh clo

will show the time the router is using which should be the ntp time.

cal set ? will lead you through the manual setting of the calendar as cisco calls their internal clock.

Ron

[Tom Dawson]

Ron,

Thanks!

I've forwarded this to our WAN administrator.

Tom