This service is a hobby of Prof. Dr. B. Erdlenbruch. Personally owned and operated NTP servers are offered in the campus network of Augsburg University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Augsburg).

There is no real necessity to operate NTP servers in our network, especially not for me. Even since I became the head of the university computing center (Rechenzentrum) this service is only - but now really - nice to have.

As a member of the computer science department (Fachbereich Informatik), I'm working on systems for factory data collection (FDC), namely personal attendance recording and logistics data capturing.

Such systems require accurate time and date to time-stamp each captured event record. For this purpose the Network Time Protocol (NTP) happens to be useful.

Of course NTP's precision is pure overkill for an FDC system. The ntpd daemon software is rather 'fat' (according to its creator), at least when run as a client.

But NTP is ready, complete, robust, simple to use and - free. Reasons enough to use it for FDC. Here are even more:

NTP is available for today's favorite operating systems, Unix in all its flavours and Microsoft Windows. It supports many time sources like oscillators, GPS and radio clock receivers, expensive and cheap ones. It distributes time information to clients in IP networks. 'Lean' clients are also available using a variant, the Simple Network Time Protocol SNTP.

Now we have it, let's use it!

First, our FDC servers are synchronized to UTC (legal time) by NTP. The attached FDC devices, like FDC terminals and barcode scanners, are regularly supplied with time and date information.

Second, different server and workstation computers in our network correct their system clock by NTP. In a two stage process, the servers periodically poll the NTP servers and the workstations synchronize to a server.

Third, NTP can be useful for science and education. Distributed multimedia and/or database applications may exploit the full potential of NTP.

Fourth, we can offer stratum-2 NTP service for peering and synchronization to contribute to the world-wide NTP network.

Fifth, we become more experienced NTP operators. In a consultant role, we could transfer our knowledge to industry partners which intend to set up and operate a NTP subnet of their own.

Last but not least, this accompanying web site is a motivating exercise for web server administration, html, CGI, Perl, and English language. I apologize for any mistakes hurting native English (or Perl) language speakers and invite you to send corrections.

After all, you possibly can use the material presented here for your own NTP installations, as I benefitted from others before.

To learn more about my activities and for address information visit my personal home page.