Due to strange behaviors in the system clock (it seems a bit crazy: battery is O
ID: 658428 • Letter: D
Question
Due to strange behaviors in the system clock (it seems a bit crazy: battery is OK, but it loses many minutes randomly) I need to sync the time of my computer automatically via internet. I am testing NetTime that seems to be working fine, but if has a 15 minutes frequency limit.
Its docs say:
The vast majority of users should find that NetTime more than meets their needs, however if you have specific requirements for very accurate time, I recommend that you investigate installing a full NTP client. Although you can set NetTime to sync more frequently to compensate for an inaccurate system clock, this isn't really recommended because of the greater strain that it puts onto the public NTP servers. A full NTP client has extra features to ensure better time accuracy (normally well below 10 milliseconds even between time syncs) by adjusting the rate that the system clock runs at. If you are administering a large number of PCs for an organization, it's also recommended that you configure a full NTP client on your network and have the rest of your systems sync to it with an SNTP client - this reduces the load on the public time servers even further as well as ensuring that all systems are in sync with a single time source.
So, I wanna try such Full NTP Client, but googling about those words shows me the same results (even the same NetTime program as one of the first results) that I obtain when searching for any other NTP Client.
Could someone, please, recommend me any (open source preferred) Full NTP Client? I am running Windows 7 SP1, but a generic any-Windows solution would be better.
Explanation / Answer
There is one canonical NTP server software provided by the NTP project. This software has been developed collaboratively over many years and is the one that everybody uses as the reference implementation of an NTP server. It is production ready and is high quality. I strongly suspect that this is the specific software that NetTime is referring to when they say "full NTP client".
The software was originally developed for Unix systems, but some people have built the same software for Windows. Here is one such build which is packaged with an installer: http://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/sw/ntp.htm I have not used that particular Windows build, but I have used the same NTP server software on FreeBSD for many years.