Compare two NTP servers

Question

I want to compare the time used by our internal servers against time.microsoft.com. Is there an easy way to do this?

Basically a third party sends me messages stamped with a time that has been synced iwth time.microsoft.com, unfortunately our servers are using a different time server, so I want to calculate if there is a significant difference between the our NTP synced time, and theirs.

Is there a simple way to accurately compare times?

regards,

David.

Answer 1

In Linux, ntpdate -q will query a remote server. Nagios' check_ntp script essentially does this for monitoring.

In older versions of Windows, I'd used ported version of ntp before. If you require a Windows specific solution, someone else may be able to contribute further.

Answer 2

For Windows (XP & 2003 or above):

w32tm /stripchart /computer:time.windows.com

You'll need to be able to reach time.windows.com on port 123 UDP.