Skip to main content

Where on Earth Are the Best-50 Time Servers?

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Passive and Active Measurement (PAM 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 11419))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We present a list of the Best-50 public IPv4 time servers by mining a high-resolution dataset of Stratum-1 servers for Availability, Stratum Constancy, Leap Performance, and Clock Error, broken down by continent. We find that a server with ideal leap performance, high availability, and low stratum variation is often clock error-free, but this is no guarantee. We discuss the relevance and lifetime of our findings, the scalability of our approach, and implications for load balancing and server ranking.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Archipelago monitor locations. http://www.caida.org/projects/ark/locations/

  2. Bajpai, V., Schönwälder, J.: A survey on internet performance measurement platforms and related standardization efforts. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials 17(3), 1313–1341 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Brittain, S., Böhning, D.: Estimators in capture-recapture studies with two sources. AStA Adv. Stat. Anal. 93(1), 23–47 (2009)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Cao, Y., Veitch, D.: TimeServer Dataset 2016–2017. https://data.research.uts.edu.au/public/DVTSD/. Per-server results also available

  5. Cao, Y., Veitch, D.: Network timing, weathering the 2016 leap second. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2018, Honolulu, USA, 15–19 April 2018

    Google Scholar 

  6. Guyton, J.D., Schwartz, M.F.: Experiences with a Survey Tool for Discovering Network Time Protocol Servers (1994). Accessed 31 July 2015

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hong, C.-Y., Lin, C.-C., Caesar, M.: Clockscalpel: understanding root causes of internet clock synchronization inaccuracy. In: Spring, N., Riley, G.F. (eds.) PAM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6579, pp. 204–213. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19260-9_21

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Malone, D.: The leap second behaviour of NTP servers. In: Proceedings of the Traffic Monitoring and Analysis workshop, 7–8 April 2016. IFIP Digital Library (2016). http://tma.ifip.org/2016/#program

  9. Minar, N.: A Survey of the NTP Network (1999). http://xenia.media.mit.edu/ nelson/research/ntp-survey99/ntp-survey99-minar.ps

  10. Murta, C., Torres, P., Mohapatra, P.: Characterizing quality of time and topology in a time synchronization network. In: Global Telecommunications Conference, GLOBECOM 2006, pp. 1–5 (2006). IEEE, November 2006

    Google Scholar 

  11. ntp.org. NTP Pool Project (2018). Accessed 2 May 2018

    Google Scholar 

  12. pool.ntp.org. How do I use pool.net.org? http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/use.html

  13. pool.ntp.org. NTP Pool server selection. http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/NTPPoolServers

  14. Staff, R.N.: Ripe atlas: a global internet measurement network. Internet Protoc. J. 18(3) (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sutherland, W.J.: Ecological Census Techniques: A Handbook. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2006)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  16. Veitch, D., Ridoux, J., Korada, S.B.: Robust synchronization of absolute and difference clocks over networks. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 17(2), 417–430 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Veitch, D., Vijayalayan, K.: Network timing and the 2015 leap second. In: Proceedings of PAM 2016, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 31 March - 1 April 2016

    Google Scholar 

  18. Vijayalayan, K., Veitch, D.: Rot at the roots? Examining public timing infrastructure. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2016, San Francisco, CA, USA, 10–15 April 2016

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

Partially supported by Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme #DP170100451.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yi Cao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Appendix

Appendix

(see Tables 6 and 7).

Table 6. URL to IP mapping of the servers in Table 4.
Table 7. URL to IP mapping of the servers in Table 5.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Cao, Y., Veitch, D. (2019). Where on Earth Are the Best-50 Time Servers?. In: Choffnes, D., Barcellos, M. (eds) Passive and Active Measurement. PAM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15986-3_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15986-3_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15985-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15986-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics