[Lowfer] NTP software

[Stewart Bryant]

kg5nm at comcast.net wrote:
> NTP is not built into any Windows operating system.  Microsoft chose SNTP which is a very different solution to the operating system time problem.
> 

Are you sure?

This gives the history:

http://www.spectracomcorp.com/Support/Library/IntegrationGuides/SynchwithW32Time/tabid/164/Default.aspx

... and this seems to be definitive:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490605.aspx

"Note that computers running Windows XP use the Network Time Protocol 
(NTP), while computers running Windows 2000 use the Simple Network Time 
Protocol (SNTP)."

There seems to be a number of other tech notes on the Microsoft site 
that suggest that they changed with the version of W32time that they
introduced with Windows server 2003. WRT to XP, it seems that NTP was
introduced with SP2, and for security reasons alone I can't see
why all XP installations would not be SP2.

> SNTP uses a jam-sync approach whereby every "x" seconds it force-corrects the system time regardless of it's error.  This creates a saw-tooth drift shape determined by the local clock drift rate and the update interval.

For applications such as WSPR, SNTP, although crude, is probably fine.

73

Stewart/G3YSX