Russell Fulton wrote:

we have discovered that most of the off campus sources we had for our NTP service are no longer there. Anybody willing to let us connect to their servers?

Industrial Research's Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL)is now providing a publicly accessible primary Network Time Protocol (NTP) server for the synchronisation of computer time for connections within New Zealand. The Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL) is the official disseminator of the time standard, UTC(MSL), for New Zealand. (Most people will be familiar with their time service disseminated as a series of "pips" broadcast by Radio New Zealand on the National Radio station. ) MSL is now providing a Network Time Protocol (NTP) stratum 1 server for connections within New Zealand. The server is referenced to UTC(MSL) by direct connection of a pulse per second signal from the master caesium atomic clock which is part of the New Zealand time standard. The time in the server is typically stable to around 1 microsecond with respect to the time in the caesium clock. Using the server The server is a publicly available server open to all connections from within NZ. Its address is msltime.irl.cri.nz (Note: this server only services NTP and 'Simple Network Time Protocol' (SNTP) requests. It does not respond to 'datetime' requests. Government agencies however, should register their use of the server with MSL by sending the IP address of their server (a static address is required) and a contact email address to time(a)irl.cri.nz . The reason for this requirement is that some servers overseas have been flooded with requests from devices such as routers and access to the server may have to be restricted at some time in the future. Agencies should limit their requests to come from at most three servers and then any additional server should connect to what will be the agency's three stratum 2 clocks. The best and most accurate way of using this service is to install the official NTP distribution from www.ntp.org. Versions are available for most versions of Unix. Windows versions are available for Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Please note that this message has been liberally pillaged from a fact sheet on the E-government website (http://www.e.govt.nz/programme/docs/Time.pdf) and further details are contained there (sorry, pdf only at present. I'm working on getting more accessible pages up there). Regards Mark Harris Manager Moderation and Web Standards State Services Commission PO Box 329, Wellington, NZ Tel: 64 4 495 2844 Email mailto:web.guidelines(a)ssc.govt.nz -- Caution: The content of this email is the property of the State Services Commission. If you have received this message in error please notify the sender immediately and delete.