[time-nuts] SLIP vs Ethernet for NTP

Iain Young iain at g7iii.net
Sun Oct 23 09:28:08 UTC 2011


Hi Guys,

I have often heard it said that since RS-232 is more "deterministic",
and suffers from less jitter, and uncertainties, than ethernet, that
it makes a better medium for time distribution (no CDMA for a start).

(Especially if you know how many bits you need to squirt over the
RS-232 link at what baud rate)

Since I am shortly going to have quite a few Srata 1 time sources,
my first thought of just plugging them all into a switch, and then
having an S2 box sat on the LAN, and distribute from there.

And remembering the rules about RS-232 etc, the (possibly mad) thought
of running SLIP or PPP over dedicated serial lines to link the Strata 1
boxes to the Strata 2 machine.

(I can't connect all the Strata 0 devices to the same Strata 1 box,
as there will be other processing being done on the GPS data using
RTKLIB on a couple of them)

To be honest, this is for nothing more than fun, and nothing critical
(this is time *nuts* after all), although it may well mean I have less
copper Ethernet hanging around working like tuned antennas, *and*
wouldn't need to go fibre on quite so many machines!

What are people's opinion and experience of doing such a thing ?


Best Regards

Iain











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