Re: [LEAPSECS] Introduction of long term scheduling

From: Peter Bunclark <psb_at_ast.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 10:57:42 +0000 (GMT)

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Zefram wrote:
>
> Conciseness is useful for network protocols. Bandwidth is increasingly
> the limiting factor: CPU speed and bulk storage sizes have been
> increasing faster. An NTPv3 packet is only 48 octets of UDP payload;
> if a leap second table is to be disseminated in the same packets then
> we really do want to think about the format nybble by nybble.

Surely not; ntp worked fine back when LANs were dozens of machines on
shared 10Mbs ethernet and WANs were 64k if you were lucky. With
switched gigabit and broadband to homes we have orders of magnitude more
bandwidth than the early days.
        Also, much of the overhead is in packet processing; while you keep
a message down to one packet, the transmission time really does go as the
raw wire speed.

I agree totally, data delivered with a timestamp should be concise, but
it shouldn't be obfuscated for the sake of an infinitesimal amount of
bandwidth.

Cheers
        Peter.
Received on Mon Jan 08 2007 - 02:59:43 PST