Amusing implications

Eric S. Raymond esr at thyrsus.com
Tue Feb 5 19:37:36 UTC 2019


Achim Gratz via devel <devel at ntpsec.org>:
> Matthew Selsky via devel writes:
> > See https://www.ntpsec.org/drivers.html
> >
> > INACCURATE
> > Remove GPS drivers and time radios for which the hardware offers no
> > better source accuracy than a timing GPS available for less than $75
> > in 2015; that is, about 5µs. (However, do not necessarily remove
> > poorer-performing GPS-conditioned clocks, as they continue to supply
> > time in holdover mode when the GPS cannot get satellite lock.)
> 
> Thanks for pointing that out.  That limit is way too restrictive for VLF
> clocks (even when phase modulation is used) and these are the only game
> left when you want to avoid the cluster risk that GPS is.  NTP and any
> applications that rely on it functions well enough when the clock is
> accurate to 5ms, so that would be a more likely limit to put there.

Er.  That was probably a typo or thinko. I agree that microseconds
is too small and milliseconds is reasonable. I'll fix it.

Note that we won't generally turf out refclocks on INACCURACY grounds alone.
Only one driver with INACCURATE but no other quirk has been removed; that was
the Dumb Clock driver, which was a plain stupid idea on several other levels.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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