Time sync problems.

[Poppa_Meth]

I've noticed the computers are work all seem to have issues syncing their clocks to the internet. My home computer has no such issues but one at my girlfriends house also has similar issues. The only common denominator is both of the problematic networks on using a Linksys router where mine is an SMC.

I can try to manually syn and only time-a.nist.gov works on these machines. time.window.com and time.nist.gov error out. Any input on this?

[aedipuss]

try the pooled time servers. there's always hundreds up and running.

us.pool.ntp.org

[jman98]

It's always possible that the Linksys router is not allowing the NTP protocol through. I'm not sure what Windows uses for time synch, but assuming it uses the general industry standard of NTP (a poor assumption given Microsoft's reluctance to do anything like everyone else in the world), the router should allow communication over port 123, the standard for NTP. Again, if Windows uses some other port than 123 for this, you'll have to find out what that port is.

[AlanHK]

See Accessing the NIST Internet Time Service through a firewall

[Poppa_Meth]

I really don't think it's a router issue. I'm using DD-WRT firmware and there is a NTP Client setting in there set to Enabled, though no server is listed in router configuration. However some servers work fine and others don't. us.pool.ntp.org seems to work fine at the moment.

[AlanHK]

I really don't think it's a router issue. I'm using DD-WRT firmware and there is a NTP Client setting in there set to Enabled.

That may just be for the router itself. Some routers keep a log and timestamp entries, thus they need to have a clock. There have been some problems with poorly coded routers that slam timeservers, several times a second, trying to do this. In that case, the time servers might blacklist you (or perhaps someone else on your IP or IP block).

[Poppa_Meth]

Yes after further reading it does seems that this setting is just for the router. I can access certain time servers and not others and later on I can no longer access the ones I did earlier but I can access others fine. I don't think the connection itself is being blocked. None of this was an issue until after the daylight savings updates started coming down the line. I wonder if that is a factor.

[AlanHK]

I use Dimension4 on my Win2k PC to set time. It's small and efficient (and free) and can be set to adjust time on boot and then shut down. If the XP built-in client is causing the hassle, this may be worth a try.

[Poppa_Meth]

I just discovered my home computer has the same problem. The SMC router I have at how has a feature built in where you can tell it to Sync to a time server just like windows does. The router can't connect to most of the time servers either.

[Poppa_Meth]

A little more research shows that while my home PC also has issues syncing it doesn't effect the system clock. Two out of three at work change time randomly throughout the day. I disconnected them from the net and still they change time so there is something on the system getting screwed up. The only difference between these two and the one that isn't having issues, is that they both run an SQL server. I'm wondering if the SQL server is having issues with the daylight savings changes. I don't know of any patches though.