The NTP Pool has very simple guidelines for vendors distributing software with hard-coded NTP server names. Very simply, they ask that you set up a vendor DNS alias. Details here: <a href="http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/vendors.html#basic-guidelines" rel="nofollow">http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/vendors.html#basic-guidelines</a><p>The NTP Pool is an incredibly valuable public resource. It's run by volunteers, all they ask is you treat the resource with respect so it works for everyone.
Later in the thread:<p>> I looked at it in some more detail a few hours after I posted this and it looks like this isn't a "normal" feature of the FR24 client but rather a failure to handle DNS problems gracefully. An issue with a local DNS server meant it was returning "domain not found" for some domains, including the *.pool.ntp.org domains.<p>> It seems the FR24 client has embedded calls to system programs to would find the first working (i.e successful ping) NTP host, sync up time from there and then carry on, but in this case as each host fails it tries the next in the list and when the list is exhausted it starts again from the top. Thus firing off an endless stream of DNS queries at a high rate until it manages to connect to an NTP server. The ICMP traffic wasn't actually generated in this case as the ping command fails because in my specific case the host address couldn't be found, for NTP servers that are in the pool but block ICMP this would generate traffic but still fail a ping.<p>> The local DNS problem turned out to be a misbehaving Pi-Hole installation on my home network refusing some DNS queries but it would be nice to see some kind of backoff algorithm or delay in the client, or preferably just insist on a working NTP client on the feeder rather than forced NTP syncs via external commands and a liberal use of ping.<p>Seems like the title is misleading.
This sounds like a bug (or maybe two bugs), not the result of any sort of policy decision. So, before taking a combative stance and trying to shame them into fixing it, it's important to make sure the relevant information has actually reached the person who actually <i>could</i> fix it, and they've had some time to work!
I used to love FL24, until it stopped supporting its Mac client which I paid for, rendering it useless. All you get is a message asking you to subscribe to the program you've already paid for.