ntpq update

[Eric S. Raymond]

Old mail...

Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net>:
> 
> esr at thyrsus.com said:
> >> The frags= and limit= on the mru command are only used
> >> for the first batch.  I'd like them to stick.
> 
> > There's a computation of those for second and later span requests that I
> > transcribed from the C, down around line 1287 in packet.py.  I'm very
> > reluctant to mess with it; it's at the far end of some logic that I don't
> > understand that seems to be trying to adapt to network conditions or server
> > errors or *something*. 
> 
> There is nothing magic there.  We should add some debug printout so we can 
> see what is actually going on.
> 
> But if the user specifies how big, either by packets or slot count, I'd like 
> to stick with that size, at least until we get a better idea.  I think it 
> will make more sense after we collect and print some statistics for total 
> packets and retransmissions.  Then we can do some experiments.

Please file a bug and assign it to Ian Bruene.  I'm handing off ntpq stuff
to him now, and this is just the kind of grubby experience he can use to
hone his problem-solving skills.

Ian, the tricky part here is going to be reading code (not writing it)
to understand what that adaptive logic is doing. It's pushing further in the
direction of the Mode 6 work you've been doing.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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