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I'm using Meinberg NTP to sync the time in a VPS. The clock refuses to sync - there's a ~30s shift comparing to other servers. Also ntpq -p is continuously showing zeros for reach, delays and jitters, which means something's wrong...

Actions I've taken which didn't help:

  • Restarted the NTP service using a script that comes with Meinberg NTP
  • Added port 123 for UDP and TCP as an exception port to Windows Firewall
  • Added Meinberk NTP executables as an exception program to Windows Firewall
  • Completely disabled Windows Firewall
  • validated iburst appears after each server listed in the configuration file
  • Restarted the server

The OS is a Windows Server Standard SP2 32bit.

What did I miss?

UPDATE 1

Here's ntpq -p result:

     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
==============================================================================
 voxl-nyc-21.ser .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 sola-sea-04.ser .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000
 207.32.191.59   .INIT.          16 u    -   64    0    0.000    0.000   0.000

UPDATE 2
Turns out that in addition to the Windows Firewall, our VPS provider has blocked all UDP communication to our VPS instance. After opening UDP port 123 it worked flawlessly.

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1 Answer 1

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Now it seems you're not communicating with your peers. Either they're not up, not reachable, or a firewall or similar device is blocking UDP port 123.

207.32.191.59 appears to be a working stratum 2 server to me, so if the machine otherwise has working Internet access, I'd bet on a firewall.

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  • David, do you know how I could set it up so that it will sync every 2 minutes? It's critical for our operation to be as time synced as possible to other network servers
    – Jonathan
    Nov 17, 2011 at 17:35
  • I have iburst set in the configuration file, I also restarted the server and it's still ~30s away
    – Jonathan
    Nov 17, 2011 at 17:43
  • I've synced servers before and their time delta fell immediately to a few milliseconds. AFAIK remaining on 30 seconds this long means something's not working. Also, why would the ntp status give zeros on delays and jitters, that is never true
    – Jonathan
    Nov 17, 2011 at 17:49
  • by "stats" did you mean ntpq -p output? posted...
    – Jonathan
    Nov 17, 2011 at 18:22
  • I completely disabled the firewall, still no joy
    – Jonathan
    Nov 17, 2011 at 20:00

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