Achim Gratz via devel <devel@ntpsec.org>: > Matthew Selsky via devel writes: > > On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 04:41:30PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond via devel wrote: > > > >> Well, first, the historical target for accuracy of WAN time service is > >> more than an order of magnitude higher than 1ms. The worst-case jitter > >> that could add would be barely above the measurement-noise floor at worst, > >> and more probably below it. > > > > Our target is < 1 us, even for WAN time service. We would want to > > keep/improve this accuracy target. > > Assuming you really talk about accuracy of the time transfer (i.e. the > maximum time difference between any two systems) that is impossible > given the principle that NTP uses.
That's what I thought, but I don't have your level of expertise about the error budget of NTP sync so I couldn't quantify it. Talk to me about what you think the effect of very occasional stop-the-world pauses of 600 microseconds or less would be on sync accuracy. By "very occasionally" let's say once every ten minutes or so, that being what I think is a *very* pessimistic estimate of GC frequency for a program with NTP's memory-usage pattern. What I want to understand - and have others understand - is whether pauses of that size and frequency would mess with sync accuracy enough that heroic measures are required to avoid them. What kind of distortion would they introduce in comparison with other components of the error budget? Mind you, heroic measures are available. The simplest would be to run with GC off by default and schedule times to perform a GC when it can reasonably be expected not to collide with the next polling action. But before I plan something like that I want to be sure it is actually necessary. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> _______________________________________________ devel mailing list devel@ntpsec.org http://lists.ntpsec.org/mailman/listinfo/devel