WTF *Nix

It’s NTP Server Time!

So what is NTP you may ask? It’s what we call Network Time Protocol, which helps us all synchronize our *nix system’s clock with an accurate time source. There are a number of websites that allow the public to access and sync up with them. They are divided into two types Stratum 1 and Stratun 2

What are these so called Stratum’s you may ask?

Stratum 1 = NTP websites using an atomic clock for timing

Stratum 2 = NTP websites with slightly but accurately LESS time sources (NOT ACCURATE to the REAL ATOMIC CLOCKS)

You may get a list of available NTP Stratum type servers from: www.ntp.org

It is only a valid and good practice to keep at least one *nix server on your local network be tthe “local time server” for all of your other devices… This only makes and keeps the correlation of system events on different systems much easier to maintain a “central but local” time. It not only helps there but also helps in bandwidth usage, due to the NTP traffic and reduces the need to manage firewall rules for “EACH” of the NTP clients that you have running if you have more than one on your network…

Sometimes, (majority of the time) not all of your servers will have NET access which in such cases you’ll need a central “TIME SERVER” / “SERVER” that any and all can access off your local network. That being said you can have a “Gateway” server to do all this for you if configured properly and accordingly.

That’s all for now on the NTP servers, it’s time to head out and party in Seattle it’s 9:56:44PM PST per my NTP server, and I will be back later to discuss on how the ntp.conf file works But you need to get ntp yourself from a reliable source if you don’t have it installed on your server already… Use Google.com to find it for your *nix flavor.