[RTTY] Time setting program

[Peter Laws]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 01:02, Bill, W6WRT <dezrat1242 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Everyone knows your computer clock should be as accurate as possible for
> amateur radio purposes. I recently ran across a program which makes it
> easy to keep it very, very close.



Posted these messages regarding accurate time on your station PC to a
couple lists over the last few years.  W3HCF's Network Time Protocol
remains -- after some 30 years -- the gold standard of network
time-keeping.


Here's one:

Assuming something in the Microsoft "family", please look at
http://www.meinberg.de/english/sw/ntp.htm  These guys have done a nice
port of NTP to Windows.  It will even turn off the
non-standards-compliant Windows time client for you.  Look for the
Monitor program as well.

Mac folks have a fully-functional NTP daemon, though by default if
only points at Apple.  You're better off going into a terminal window,
becoming root, adding a few more high-stratum time sources (look at
http://ntp.org/ for a list), and restarting.

If you're on a different UNIX or GNU/Linux, likely you are already
good to go as most distros come with NTP preconfigured to use the NTP
pools.

BTW, the guy that wrote all the NTP RFCs and whose group has been
developing the daemon for years is W3HCF, an engineering prof at the
Univ of Delaware.


Here's the other:


I've not read anything about the W7 time client specifically, but the
general trend is that Windows time client has come closer to actually
adhering to the relevant Network Time Protocol RFCs with each release
(i.e. 2k was bad, XP was better).  Vista is said to be an actual NTP
implementation and not just SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) so
maybe W7 is, too.

What I do is disable Windows' time service and replace it with the
Windows port of the NTP daemon.  See
http://www.meinberg.de/english/sw/ntp.htm  Meinberg specifically lists
W7 as being supported which isn't really a surprise.  No charge for
the software since it's just a Windows port of an open source project.
 Get the "monitor" program as well which makes it easier to configure.

NTP, BTW, was developed by W3HCF over the last 30 or so years.

If you are hell-bent on making Windows' time service work -- and by
default, it doesn't work as well as it's capable of -- see these two
references:

http://tf.nist.gov/service/pdf/win2000xp.pdf

http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/WindowsTimeService

If you run any form of UNIX including Linux, of course NTP is built-in
and you don't have to worry about any of this.

Remember that you need at least 3 sources of time in order for the NTP
daemon to get a really good idea of UTC.  There are lists of public
time servers at http://ntp.org/.


-- 
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!