Re: [gpsd-dev] Clarifications needed for the time-service HOWTO

[Eric S. Raymond]

Gary E. Miller <address@hidden>:
> Yo Eric!
> 
> I've read, and appreciate where you are going with it.  There are
> a few incorrect things though, and questions to answer.  I will
> need to spend an hour to do so and can not do that during $DAYJOB.
> 
> I'll get it tonight.

No problem, I have other things to work on.
 
> The first problem is you assume Stratum 1 know what they are doing
> (known and compensated-for latency).  Any fool can be a Stratum 1 and
> there are a lot of really bad ones.  How I know, and how I can show you
> to know, to explain in this doc, is what will take me a while to write.

The public documentation insists that Stratum 1 servers are supposed 
to have fixed and latency-compensated paths.  I totally believe you
when you say people screw this up, but that doesn't seem like a good
reason to ignore the specification.

Maybe the thing to do is keep the specification in the overview and later 
note that there are incompetent Stratum 1s that get it wrong.

Are Ask Bjørn Hansen and his crew at the NTP Pool crew doing a good 
job of kicking bogus Stratum 1s off their list?  If so, that's a
thing to note in the HOWTO.  If they're doing a terrible job, that
would be an even more important thing to note.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>

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