On: NTP at NIST Boulder Has Lost Power

[ThrowawayTestr]

If your computer was using it as your time server and you didn't have alternatives configured your clock my have drifted a few seconds.

[Roark66 → ThrowawayTestr]

I never checked it, but how much a typical's pc/server's clock does actually drift over a week or a month? I always thought it's well under a second.

[bhouston → Roark66]

Clocks do drift. Seconds a week is definitely possible. I think there are varying quality of internal clocks in electronic devices, and the cheaper the quality the more drift there is. I think small cheap microcontrollers can drift seconds per day.

[ycui1986 → bhouston]

cheap microcontrollers use RC oscillators. If they only drift a few seconds a day, that would be an achievement by itself.

RC oscillator is poor enough that early days USB communication would fail if running on RC clock.

[1970-01-01 → Roark66]

I've seen some new ThinkPads lose a minute a month and others (the old ThinkPads) keep within a second of NTP over an entire year. It depends.

[layer8 → Roark66]

Several seconds per week is normal. Oscillator accuracy is roughly on the order of 10 PPM, which would correspond to 6 seconds per week.

[soared → Roark66]

I have an extremely cheap and extremely low power automatic cat feed - it’s been on 2 D batteries for 18 months. I just reset it after it had drifted 19 minutes, so about 1 minute a month, or 15 seconds a week!