NTPTRACE(1)						      General Commands Manual						       NTPTRACE(1)

NAME

       ntptrace - trace a chain of NTP servers back to the primary source

SYNOPSIS

       ntptrace [ -n ] [ server ]

DESCRIPTION

       ntptrace determines where a given Network Time Protocol (NTP) server gets its time from, and follows the chain of NTP servers back to their
       master time source. If given no arguments, it starts with localhost. Here is an example of the output from ntptrace:

       % ntptrace
       localhost: stratum 4, offset 0.0019529, synch distance 0.144135
       server2ozo.com: stratum 2, offset 0.0124263, synch distance 0.115784
       usndh.edu: stratum 1, offset 0.0019298, synch distance 0.011993, refid 'WWVB'

       On each line, the fields are (left to right): the host name, the host stratum, the time offset between that host and  the  local  host  (as
       measured  by  ntptrace;	this  is  why  it  is not always zero for "localhost"), the host synchronization distance, and (only for stratum-1
       servers) the reference clock ID. All times are given in seconds. Note that the stratum is the server hop count to the primary source, while
       the synchronization distance is the estimated error relative to the primary source. These terms are precisely defined in RFC-1305.

OPTIONS

       -d     Turns on some debugging output.

       -n     Turns off the printing of host names; instead, host IP addresses are given. This may be useful if a nameserver is down.

       -r retries
	      Sets the number of retransmission attempts for each host (default = 5).

       -t timeout
	      Sets the retransmission timeout (in seconds) (default = 2).

       -v     Prints verbose information about the NTP servers.

BUGS

       This program makes no attempt to improve accuracy by doing multiple samples.

Network Time Protocol						  October 7, 2006						       NTPTRACE(1)