ntpdsim - Network Time Protocol (NTP) simulator

Last update: May 4, 2022 17:05 UTC (dbea9b7d4)

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All in a row.

Synopsis

ntpdsim [ -B bdly ] [ -C snse ] [ -O clk_time ] [ -S sim_time ] [ -T ferr ] [ -W fsne ] [ -Y ndly ] [ -X pdly ]

Description

The ntpdsim program is an adaptation of the ntpd operating system daemon. The program operates as a discrete time simulator using specified systematic and random driving sources. It includes all the mitigation and discipline algorithms of the actual daemon, but with the packet I/O and system clock algorithms driven by simulation. Most functions of the real ntpd remain intact, including the monitoring, statistics recording, trace and host name resolution features. Further information on the simulator is on the NTP Discrete Event Simulator page.

The simulator is most useful to study NTP behavior in response to time and/or frequency transients under specific conditions of network jitter and oscillator wander. For this purpose the daemon can be driven by pseudorandom jitter and wander sample sequences characteristic of real networks and oscillators. The jitter generator produces samples from a Poisson distribution, while the wander generator produces samples from a Guassian distribution.

The easiest way to use this program is to create a ntpstats directory, configuration file ntp.conf and frequency file ntp.drift and test shell test.sh in the base directory. The ntp.drift file and ntpstats directory can be empty to start. The test.sh script can contain something like

rm ./ntpstats/*
ntpdsim -O 0.1 -C .001 -T 400 -W 1 -c ./ntp.conf,

which starts the simulator with a time offset 100 ms, network jitter 1 ms, frequency offset 400 PPM and oscillator wander 1 PPM/s. These parameters represent typical conditions with modern workstations on a Ethernet LAN. The ntp.conf file should contain something like

disable kernel
server pogo
driftfile ./ntp.drift
statsdir ./ntpstats/
filegen loopstats type day enable
filegen peerstats type day enable

Command Line Options

Note

The NTP development team is moving to the use of a syntax-directed configuration file design. When complete these options will be replaced by a new one. Most of the ntpd command line options apply also to ntpdsim. In addition, the following command line options apply to ntpdsim.

-B bdly: Specify beep delay (3600) s.
-C snse: Specify network jitter parameter (0) s.
-O clk_time: Specify initial time offset (0) s.
-S sim_time: Specify simulation duration (86400) s.
-T ferr: Specify initial frequency offset (0) PPM.
-W fnse: Specify oscillator wander parameter (0) PPM/s.
-Y ndly: Specify network propagation delay (.001) s.
-Z pdly: Specify server processing delay (.001) s.

Files

/etc/ntp.conf - the default name of the configuration file
/etc/ntp.drift - the default name of the drift file
/etc/ntp.keys - the default name of the key file