burst/iburst

[Hal Murray]

gem at rellim.com said:
> Gack.  Something about how burst works was bugging me.  So I put tcpdump on
> it.  I don't see any difference between burst and not having burst... I'm
> not saying it does not do anything, just not anything immediately obvious. 

burst only matters if the polling interval is greater than 6.  The burst size 
is limited to 8 and also limited so that the average polling rate doesn't 
exceed the non-burst rate with a polling interval of 6.

> iburst does have an affect.  I see six, (not eight) time requests, spaced 2
> seconds apart.  Sorta like the doc says.

6 is what I expect after reading the documentation recently.  I may have said 
8 previously.  If so, sorry for the confusion.

> But a second peer ignores the iburst, maybe some rate limit thing?

Are you using "peer" or "server" in your ntp.conf?

I can't think of any reason for the second (or third...) server to do 
anything differently from the first.  I'd expect them to be interleaved.  You 
do have to put iburst on each server line.


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.