Computer Time Synchronization
A Beginner's Guide to Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Warning! This page contains obsolete information.

What NTP Does and How It Works

Before getting to the mechanics of setting an NTP server up, it's necessary to provide an explanation of how NTP works. This is going to be very basic; if you want the details go to the official site. The Executive Summary gives background on the protocol and the Notes on Configuring NTP and Setting up a NTP Subnet explains how NTP works and gives details on server organization and interrelationships. The Executive Summary is heavy reading with subheadings like "Computer Clock Modelling and Error Analysis", "Correctness Principles" and "Data Grooming Algorithms."

The reorganized NTP site includes a new Official NTP Documentation page.

NTP is based on a multi tiered system where each layer is called a stratum. Servers at each level peer with each other and provide time services to lower levels. Servers at the top or in stratum 1 are directly connected to atomic clocks or radio based time receivers. By compensating for their distance from the authoritative time sources these, receivers provide highly accurate time services to stratum 1 servers.

Because clocks can fail like any hardware, stratum 1 servers peer with other stratum 1 servers. NTP assumes that there is a correct time value and that by using multiple sources, unreasonable values can and should be discarded. This is not simple or weighted averaging like UNIX's timed provides. If their clock diverges from the times provided by the peers by more than the reasonable amount, stratum 1 servers will stop using their own clock. There are approximately 100 public and semi public stratum 1 servers.

Below stratum 1, NTP servers are supposed to obtain time from servers above them as well as at their own level (stratum). The configuration instructions say that each top level server within a specific domain should be a client to at least two servers at the level directly above it and peer with all the other servers in their own domain at their same level as well as at least one other outside peer on the same level. The client servers receive time from but never provide time to the servers at the next higher stratum. Peers receive time from and provide it to other peers. There should be at least three coordinated top level servers in each domain so each network should communicate with at least 6 outside servers at the next higher (numerically lower) stratum and at least 3 outside peers in the same stratum.

There are somewhat more than 100 public stratum 2 NTP servers. See Public NTP Time Servers for the rules for accessing these servers and the lists of public NTP servers. Because of the load placed on stratum 1 servers, only NTP servers providing time services to more than a hundred clients should connect directly to stratum 1 servers. Individual computers and small LANs should use the public stratum 2 servers provided in the list.

When acting as a client and obtaining time from another NTP server, the NTP server measures the total time it takes to get a response. It assumes that the network delay is one half the total and calculates the offset (amount to adjust the local clock) based on this. Because of variable network conditions the actual delay may be different on the two legs of the trip. By talking to several servers, it should get a fairly tight clustering of valid times and discard the times that are clearly off because the return leg was much longer or shorter than the outgoing leg or for other reasons.

When the NTP server is first run on a computer, it is very active in talking to the servers from which it obtains its time so it can determine the network delay and a reasonable starting offset. It also starts to calculate the local computer's drift (the amount by which the clock is fast or slow). After the drift is calculated the normal behavior is to save it in an ntp.drift file so that following computer or server restarts it doesn't need to repeat all the work it does the first time it runs. The Quick Start page gives details of what an NTP server does when it first starts.

The first time an NTP server runs, after calculating the offset, it typically makes a single large time adjustment. Since this could result in moving the clock back by a significant amount which might cause problems for some applications, the large adjustment can be prevented with a command line argument. Not using the large adjustment may result in the NTP server taking a very long time to adjust the computer's time to a correct value. After the large adjustment is made or if it's not allowed, the NTP server makes a series of very small clock adjustments.

The NTP server calculates the local computer's drift and uses this to continuously adjust the clock to compensate for the drift. It also adjusts the drift calculation as necessary. As long as the NTP server is running (up to a point), the computer gets an increasingly accurate clock. Since it only slowly adjusts the time based on multiple outside sources, over time each computer running an NTP server should have a clock that gets closer to actual Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) which is NTP's goal. If an NTP server has several sources, it's less likely to be pushed away from the correct time by problems on a single server that it synchronizes with. Once NTP has been running for a while and as long as it remains running, a computer should be able to maintain accurate time for hours or longer if it's cut off from it's time sources.

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