Here is your base pricing from Truetime: NTS-150 $2395 NTS-200 $3595 -Mike On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, John Todd wrote:
Happen to know what the base price is for these? "Low price" is a relative term when dealing with clock makers. :)
JT
http://www.truetime.com/index.html
Not exactly "stand alone" because you have to place the antenna somwhere where it can see the GPS satellites as is the case with any any Stratum 1 NTP device. Then you have to program the IP into it and plug the ethernet into it. They are really simple to install and configure. They give you a certain amount of Coax (you can order more if need be) and you put the antenna on the roof and run it down to the receiver. Quite simple.
They have a couple different models to choose from.
-Mike
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Mike Leber wrote:
I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions for a low priced, off the shelf, complete (includes any necessary receivers), standalone (as in you just plug it in and connect ethernet), stratum 1 NTP server?
Please also mention where to buy it.
Mike.
+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- ///////////////////////////////////////// - Mike Lyon - - Studio Engineer - - KKUP Public Radio, Cupertino, Ca - - Cell: 408-621-4826 - - www.fitzharris.com/~mlyon - /////////////////////////////////////////
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution. (Pardon me if some of you on the list snicker at my reluctance at the $2400 price - for some of us the "new, new Econcomy" is making things like NTP Stratum 1 clocks a luxury that The Budgeters doesn't see as necessary, since it's an invisible engineering issue.) One would think that a vendor could come up with a 1u rackmount box with a GPS and single-board computer (BSD or Linux-based) for ~$500 total cost. Add 150% for profit and distribution costs, you're still in the $1300 range, which is more reasonable. I suppose my oversimplification is the reason I'm not in the hardware business. I'd be even happier with a PCI-bus card that I could put into an old (reasonably fast) PC and a CD-ROM with an OpenBSD distribution that automatically did the Right Thing. There is a case to be made about off-the-shelf PC hardware not being accurate enough to handle a true Stratum-1 clock, and that is a valid point. However, if I can get within .5ms, I'm happy since most of my applications don't require anything more accurate than that. (Those of you timing T1's should use the more expensive systems.) I will go out on a limb and say that a reduction in the cost of stratum-1 servers will increase their use across the Internet. The results of such an increase would be arguably visible, as the current multi-layer timekeeping system seems to be more-or-less keeping clocks correct to the point of usefulness, at least from a layer-4-and-up standpoint. However, accuracy and self-determination for timing are probably things that most organizations would consider "good" by self-evidence, and the lower the price the more possible things become to implement. Perhaps there are reasons that putting stratum-1 clocks in many, many places is sub-optimal; I leave that for others to illuminate. I know that I would like to not rely on POP-external network connections to keep my clock sources accurate, but these prices (while very inexpensive, compared to other stratum-1 sources I have seen) are still outside the "put-one-in-every-POP" price. JT At 9:48 AM -0700 8/27/02, Mike Lyon wrote:
Here is your base pricing from Truetime:
NTS-150 $2395 NTS-200 $3595
-Mike
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, John Todd wrote:
Happen to know what the base price is for these? "Low price" is a relative term when dealing with clock makers. :)
JT
http://www.truetime.com/index.html
Not exactly "stand alone" because you have to place the antenna somwhere where it can see the GPS satellites as is the case with any any Stratum 1 NTP device. Then you have to program the IP into it and plug the ethernet into it. They are really simple to install and configure. They give you a certain amount of Coax (you can order more if need be) and you put the antenna on the roof and run it down to the receiver. Quite simple.
They have a couple different models to choose from.
-Mike
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Mike Leber wrote:
I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions for a low priced, off the shelf, complete (includes any necessary receivers), standalone
(as in you
just plug it in and connect ethernet), stratum 1 NTP server?
Please also mention where to buy it.
Mike.
+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- ///////////////////////////////////////// - Mike Lyon - - Studio Engineer - - KKUP Public Radio, Cupertino, Ca - - Cell: 408-621-4826 - - www.fitzharris.com/~mlyon - /////////////////////////////////////////
I will go out on a limb and say that a reduction in the cost of stratum-1 servers will increase their use across the Internet. The results of such an increase would be arguably visible, as the current multi-layer timekeeping system seems to be more-or-less keeping clocks correct to the point of usefulness, at least from a layer-4-and-up standpoint.
The point ought to be made that a dense mesh of stratum-2 sources is likely more robust/accurate than a single stratum-1 source... --bill
On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 11:57:39PM -0400, John Todd wrote:
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution. (Pardon me if some of you on the list snicker at my reluctance at the $2400 price - for some of us the "new, new Econcomy" is making things like NTP Stratum 1 clocks a luxury that The Budgeters doesn't see as necessary, since it's an invisible engineering issue.)
Is it invisible? Proper timing is essential. It's not too hard to pick a suitable GPS and plug it into a host somewhere if cost is an issue. But, more to the point, you don't need a "wide distribution" of these boxes. 2 or 3 is more than enough. I tend to use my top level routers, or some distributed hosts (dns, authentication, logging, you name it) to form a stratum 2 mesh, and then have the rest of your network talk to them. A large number of stratum 2 servers talking to each other as well as a few stratum 1 clocks will result in a very stable distributed timesource that can support a whole lot of clients. You've already paid for the network, might as well use it. --msa
On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 11:57:39PM -0400, John Todd mooed:
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution. (Pardon me [...]
One would think that a vendor could come up with a 1u rackmount box with a GPS and single-board computer (BSD or Linux-based) for ~$500 total cost. Add 150% for profit and distribution costs, you're still in the $1300 range, which is more reasonable. I suppose my oversimplification is the reason I'm not in the hardware business.
You might be imagining a somewhat larger market for standalone stratum-1 timeservers than you might imagine. For real accuracy, you don't want standalone -- you want a locally connected source that you can use to tightly discipline the local clock. (When I say "real," I mean sub-milisecond). The difference is .. substantial. Taken from two of my machines on the same subnet: remote st poll reach delay offset disp ======================================================== Local CDMA 0 32 377 0.00000 -0.000011 0.00047 100Mbps Ethernet 1 1024 377 0.00035 0.001103 0.01866 And if you want paranoia, go by ntp's estimate of its accuracy: Local maximum error 5449 us, estimated error 3 us, TAI offset 0 Ether maximum error 584994 us, estimated error 1241 us, TAI offset 0 With that on the board... why do you need, or even want, a standalone NTP server if you're on a budget? Almost certainly you have a local computer in your POP -- you can even get Cisco routers to talk with a local time receiver, if all you want to do is discipline your routers. If you've got a caching nameserver or something else in your POP, that will do just as well.
I'd be even happier with a PCI-bus card that I could put into an old (reasonably fast) PC and a CD-ROM with an OpenBSD distribution that automatically did the Right Thing. There is a case to be made about
Grab a serial CDMA/GPS unit (I use the EndRun Praecis Ct because it's CDMA; I mention some GPS units below), plug it into your serial port, and stick: server 127.127.29.0 prefer fudge 127.127.29.0 refid CDMA in ntp.conf. It's about as simple as you can get. But remember -- regardless of how nifty your local clock is, you still need to have a good server mesh with NTP. Clocks go bad. CDMA base stations screw up (we've found one so far) or change protocols unexpectedly (three). GPS has serious visibility issues unless you can get an actual roof antenna (two). Configuring this mesh in an intelligent way takes work. Would make a great research project. :) The Ct costs something like $1100. endruntechnologies.com. synergy-gps.com sells a really nice GPS timing unit based on the Motorolla UT+ chipset (designed for timing), including all the parts you need, for .. eh, 600? I forget. Maybe a bit less. Plug into serial port, go. Requires a recompiled kernel under FreeBSD and Linux, but it's fairly easy to set up. If you want something for a bit less work, look at the Trimble units. (For reference: I've got two of the UT+ GPS units, and 20 EndRun Praecis Ct's. Like them both. The Ct is a heck of a lot easier to deploy in a datacenter, as would be the CDMA TrueTime model) If you're really broke, and want a stratum 1 server, host one of our network measurement boxes. We'll ship it to you, you provide the network. In return, you get a local stratum-1 timeserver, managed by yours truly. (I'm serious about this offer, btw.) As a second option: If you manage the connections between your POPs, you can get really decent remote NTP performance. The places in which NTP dies are where latencies are asymmetric. With priority assigned to inter-POP NTP traffic and known symmetric links, life could be quite happy. -Dave (time is very cool) -- work: dga@lcs.mit.edu me: dga@pobox.com MIT Laboratory for Computer Science http://www.angio.net/ I do not accept unsolicited commercial email. Do not spam me.
As I am sure you have noticed from other replies on the list here, the idea for NTP is not to have a Stratum one device at every single POP. That would be pricey not only in equipment costs but in roof-rights cost. What many do for NTP is to have one or two Stratum 1 devices amongst your network and then distribute it to a box that would then in turn distribute down to the next layer of equipment and so on. So if you are only spending $2400 and maybe even $4800 to support NTP across your whole network, I would think that would be worth it. -Mike On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, John Todd wrote:
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution. (Pardon me if some of you on the list snicker at my reluctance at the $2400 price - for some of us the "new, new Econcomy" is making things like NTP Stratum 1 clocks a luxury that The Budgeters doesn't see as necessary, since it's an invisible engineering issue.)
One would think that a vendor could come up with a 1u rackmount box with a GPS and single-board computer (BSD or Linux-based) for ~$500 total cost. Add 150% for profit and distribution costs, you're still in the $1300 range, which is more reasonable. I suppose my oversimplification is the reason I'm not in the hardware business. I'd be even happier with a PCI-bus card that I could put into an old (reasonably fast) PC and a CD-ROM with an OpenBSD distribution that automatically did the Right Thing. There is a case to be made about off-the-shelf PC hardware not being accurate enough to handle a true Stratum-1 clock, and that is a valid point. However, if I can get within .5ms, I'm happy since most of my applications don't require anything more accurate than that. (Those of you timing T1's should use the more expensive systems.)
I will go out on a limb and say that a reduction in the cost of stratum-1 servers will increase their use across the Internet. The results of such an increase would be arguably visible, as the current multi-layer timekeeping system seems to be more-or-less keeping clocks correct to the point of usefulness, at least from a layer-4-and-up standpoint. However, accuracy and self-determination for timing are probably things that most organizations would consider "good" by self-evidence, and the lower the price the more possible things become to implement. Perhaps there are reasons that putting stratum-1 clocks in many, many places is sub-optimal; I leave that for others to illuminate.
I know that I would like to not rely on POP-external network connections to keep my clock sources accurate, but these prices (while very inexpensive, compared to other stratum-1 sources I have seen) are still outside the "put-one-in-every-POP" price.
JT
At 9:48 AM -0700 8/27/02, Mike Lyon wrote:
Here is your base pricing from Truetime:
NTS-150 $2395 NTS-200 $3595
-Mike
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, John Todd wrote:
Happen to know what the base price is for these? "Low price" is a relative term when dealing with clock makers. :)
JT
http://www.truetime.com/index.html
Not exactly "stand alone" because you have to place the antenna somwhere where it can see the GPS satellites as is the case with any any Stratum 1 NTP device. Then you have to program the IP into it and plug the ethernet into it. They are really simple to install and configure. They give you a certain amount of Coax (you can order more if need be) and you put the antenna on the roof and run it down to the receiver. Quite simple.
They have a couple different models to choose from.
-Mike
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Mike Leber wrote:
I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions for a low priced, off the shelf, complete (includes any necessary receivers), standalone
(as in you
just plug it in and connect ethernet), stratum 1 NTP server?
Please also mention where to buy it.
Mike.
+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- ///////////////////////////////////////// - Mike Lyon - - Studio Engineer - - KKUP Public Radio, Cupertino, Ca - - Cell: 408-621-4826 - - www.fitzharris.com/~mlyon - /////////////////////////////////////////
-- ///////////////////////////////////////// - Mike Lyon - - Studio Engineer - - KKUP Public Radio, Cupertino, Ca - - Cell: 408-621-4826 - - www.fitzharris.com/~mlyon - /////////////////////////////////////////
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution.
and why would one want to do so? run one strat 1, two at most (widely far apart, like on different continents), and chime routers off them, chime everything else off the routers. randy
Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> writes:
Hmm... $2400 is still in the "pricey" range to be throwing out bunches of these across a network in wide distribution.
and why would one want to do so? run one strat 1, two at most
No. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=3C32924F.994E1D01%40udel.edu ---Rob
On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 09:55:21AM -0400, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
No.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=3C32924F.994E1D01%40udel.edu
"Every critical organization should run at least four low-stratum servers configured as above, so dependant servers and clients can do the same thing. Each critical server should run NTP symmetric mode (better yet manycast mode) with each of the other servers at the same stratum, together with at least one peer at the same stratume in another trusted organization." By this criteria, a stratum 2 mesh of a bunch of top tier routers or diverse hosts, with external influence, should be okay. --msa
BTW: A rather complete list of NTP products: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/hardware.html Some low price products from random browsing through the list $ 1,400 http://www.zyfer.com/products/prod_index.html $ 380 http://www.gpsclock.com/specs.html (looks like serial output only..) -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- jullrich@euclidian.com Collaborative Intrusion Detection join http://www.dshield.org
participants (8)
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bmanning＠karoshi.com -
David G. Andersen -
Johannes Ullrich -
John Todd -
Majdi S. Abbas -
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rs＠seastrom.com