It seems to me that CloudFlare should just sponsor servers for inclusion in the long-standing global NTP pools.<p><a href="https://www.ntppool.org/en/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ntppool.org/en/</a>
I'm a huge fan of Cloudflare in general, but sometimes I'm a bit uncomfortable with how much critical infrastructure is increasingly consolidated into a few single entities.
So frustrated that Cloudflare didn't just add resources/support the existing NTP Pool. Hard to even pretend their motives are altruistic at this point.
Are the local time servers stratum 1, or do they have some central stratum 1 source that they then distribute out to the edge datacenters?<p>What's the value over just building your own stratum 1 source? (Shameless plug: <a href="https://github.com/jrockway/beaglebone-gps-clock/blob/master/README.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jrockway/beaglebone-gps-clock/blob/master...</a>)
I think it would be super interesting if they started offering IEEE 1588 v2 aka Precision Time Protocol, but it would be much harder to offer compared to ntp. What they're almost certainly doing here is just running a cable to the roof where they have a GPS antenna and then run it into their datacenters into a time appliance (less likely) or a GPS pci card in one of their servers (more likely) that they then send out to those who want access.
I assume Cloudflare does not serve leap-smeared time? In regards to rough-time, does anyone know what the result would be when both Cloudflare and Google are used at the same time, and Google serves leap-smeared time?
“For many applications, accurate network time isn’t essential: it suffices to be within 10 seconds of real time”<p>I can’t imagine any application where the more accurate isn’t preferred. And 10 secs seems like quite a bit imho
This link on the site takes me to a 404 (not sure why, I'm presuming it's a static site?): <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/time-services" rel="nofollow">https://developers.cloudflare.com/time-services</a><p>I think it'd be nice to have some middleware hooking into the build process that curls every link at a depth of 1 to ensure that HTTP 400/500 error codes aren't returned.
<a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/resources/images/slt3lc6tev37/5SBj8VBjfRHi89ixodi5Fb/c0909c4f3f237dfac63303c402cec8d1/sad_clock_2x.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.cloudflare.com/resources/images/slt3lc6tev37/5SB...</a><p>Has this designer never seen an actual clock?
Personally, I don't trust Cloudflare. There's just something a bit shady about a company that defends web sites which pretend to have Adobe Flash updaters or pretend to be bankofamerica.com as free speech.<p>That said, I don't imagine they could screw up NTP too badly, except, of course, logging and tracking users.<p>I hope they don't smear leap seconds like Google, or do any of a number of other dumb things simply because they're big enough to get away with it:<p><a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/02/google_public_ntp_servers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/02/google_public_ntp_s...</a>