In article <20031027094223.6D10B11153@narn.netbsd.org>,
	netbsd@fortytwo.ch writes:
> 
> I saw that NetBSD ships ntp to use the timeservers pool at pool.ntp.org
> as per <http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/ntp.conf?annotate=1.4>
> 
> As the founder of the pool.ntp.org project, I think this is great!
> Two little things:

"pool.ntp.org" is very neat. Thanks for that!

>  - as some nameservers don't do a proper round robin (Sun nscd and
> apparently some M$ resolvers), you might end up getting the same
> timeserver address repeatedly. I have introduced {0,1,2}.pool.ntp.org
> to work around this. (Currently, this is done with CNAMES as a temporary
> hack. I will do this properly, and also document it when I get time).

What "host" tells me now, is that 1.pool.ntp.org is an
alias for europe.pool.ntp.org, 2.pool.ntp.org is an alias for
north-america.pool.ntp.org, while 0... is an alias for pool.ntp.org,
so it'll still get some of the same hosts as 1 and 2, won't it?

What about the country domains: "us.pool.ntp.org", "ca.pool.ntp.org",
and so on? Shouldn't those be preferred? How about listing some of
those, but commented out, listing some of the continents, but
commented out, and finally, for Satellites, Lunar and Antartic
colonists, and others who don't know what continent they're on,
"{0,1,2}.pool.ntp.org"?

Also, in comp.protocols.time.ntp, aspersions have been cast on
"maxpoll 12". How do you feel about leaving that off?

>  - would it be possible to add something like 'if your computer has
> a static IP address, please consider joining the timeserver pool' to
> the ntp.conf file? I see you already provide the URL to the project,
> and mention that it is a volounteer project, so perhaps this is
> sufficient, but I feel an explicit invitation would be clearer.

Sure. Shouldn't it be made clear that you need other sources
of time besides pool.ntp.org consumers (reference clocks and
those with good relations with other time servers), lest you
be flooded with well-meaning but non-helpful volunteers?

Frederick