[time-nuts] What's the best Windows 10 ntp client?

Martin Burnicki martin.burnicki at burnicki.net
Fri Sep 2 08:02:09 EDT 2016


Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> At my amateur radio club we have Internet access via a WiFi dongle with a Pay As You Go card. A Windows 10 PC is only powered up while we are there, so on around 2-4 hours per week. 
> 
> Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be the most suitable software to run on our Windows 10 PC to set the time correct? 

It depends on the accuracy requirements you have. Getting high accuracy
under Windows can be pretty tricky.

Some days ago tvb asked me off-list about details on timekeeping under
different Windows versions, and I've put some information together here:
https://www.meinbergglobal.com/download/burnicki/time_synchronization_accuracy_with_ntp.pdf

I've also put some measurement results together, which you can find here:
https://www.meinbergglobal.com/download/burnickintp_and_windows_history.pdf

These articles are PDF exports from Meinberg-internal wiki pages, so
they may not be particularly well formatted. Sorry for that.

> Someone installed "Dimension 4" 
> 
> http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/

I've never tried this.

> As far as I can see, this takes the time from one single NTP server, which I believe is not a good idea.  However,  given we only run the PC on 2-4 hours per week,  maybe no ntp client will work well,  but I would have thought using multiple servers being better than one. 
> 
> I am wondering if anyone has any better suggestions for software. .

Again, it depends on the accuracy requirements you have. The NTP daemon
(ntpd) from ntp.org has been designed for long-term operation. It tries
to determine the clock drift of the local computer, and compensate it.

The Windows port also includes a couple of workarounds for limitations
in the Windows kernel, and IMO yields very good results under the given
conditions.

Martin



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