[LEAPSECS] Windows Time's "Great Leap Forward"

Zefram zefram at fysh.org
Fri Oct 9 11:32:41 EDT 2009


Matsakis, Demetrios wrote:

>Microsoft's NTP package gives no notice of a pending leap second, even

>when acting as a server.


No great surprise. Microsoft really doesn't get NTP. Although recent
versions of Windows have come with an NTP client, as far as I can tell
this client is incapable of performing anything resembling the NTP
clock synchronisation algorithm. It merely steps the local clock to
match the NTP server, each time it receives a reply from the server,
and never steers the clock speed. It's typically configured to ask a
server for the time once a *week*.

This is not clock synchronisation as we know it, and one shouldn't be
misled by the fact that it's capable of using a proper NTP server as
its time source.

-zefram


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