Re: minstratum directive option

William G. Unruh __| Canadian Institute for|____ Tel: +1(604)822-3273
Physics&Astronomy _|___ Advanced Research _|____ Fax: +1(604)822-5324
UBC, Vancouver,BC _|_ Program in Cosmology |____ [email protected]
Canada V6T 1Z1 ____|____ and Gravity ______|_    theory.physics.ubc.ca/

On Wed, 20 Mar 2024, Sviatoslav Feshchenko wrote:

> [CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]Hello,
> The server directive has an option "minstratum" which increases the stratum of the
> source to affect its preference. In opinion, there should also be an opposite

The stratum is a measure of how far away from the original source of the time
the server is. It is also a way of preventing loops. To arbitrarly decrease
the strantum makes is completely useless and can fool clients of that server
into thinking your system is better than it is. Bad idea
It is not set the preference. It is give some indication as to how good the
server's time is.

> directive perhaps called "maxstratum" that will do the opposite. It will lower the
> stratum of the source to affect its preference. Consider the official time of
> Canada provided by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). According to
> their website (link below) they operate stratum 1 servers internally, and they also
> operate stratum 2 server which get their time from the stratum 1 internal servers.
> Public dissemination of NTP time is only available via their stratum 2 servers, but
> not stratum 1 servers. Although I don't know their exact synchronisation mechanism
> between their stratum 1 and stratum 2 server, considering that this is a government
> organization providing the official time of Canada, it is likely that they use
> highly accurate synchronisation methods. Their website states "For all practical
> purposes, the average time disseminated by the stratum-2 server is the same as the
> stratum-1 servers." It would therefore be reasonable in my opinion to be able to
> adjust their NTP source from stratum 2 to stratum 1 in Chrony, and currently, there
> is no such possibility.

Nor should there be any such possibility.

> 
> What are your thoughts on adding maxstratum option to the server directive that
> decreases the stratum of a source for preference purposes? I think it makes sense
> to have this option, and this option would only affect the preference of the
> source. It would not affect the advertised stratum level of the chrony server to
> its clients.

There are other ways of telling you system to use a specific server if that is
what you want.
> 
> NRC website link:https://nrc.canada.ca/en/certifications-evaluations-standards/canadas-official-tim
> e/network-time-protocol-ntp
> 
> Many thanks to everyone, and Miroslav in particular.
> 
>

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