The Microsoft Windows operating systems from Windows 2000 onwards has a built-in time synchronization service – 'Windows Time'. This article describes how to configure the Microsoft Windows 2003 and Windows 2000 time service as a NTP time server. It shows how to modify registry entries to configure the Microsoft Windows Time Service. The Windows Time service allows a Windows network to provide synchronisation of all machines within a domain.
Set the 'Announce Flags' registry entry to 5, to indicate a reliable time source.
The 'Special Poll Interval' registry entry defines the period in seconds that the Windows 2003 machine should poll the NTP server. A recommended value is 900 seconds, which equates to every 15 minutes.
The 'NTP Server' parameter is used to provide a list of IP addresses or DNS names, separated by a space, of NTP servers that the Windows 2003 machine can synchronise to.
Changing the 'Enabled' flag to the value 1 enables the NTP Server.
Change the server type to NTP by specifying 'NTP' in the 'Type' registry entry.
Windows 2000 can operate as an NTP client and synchronise to an NTP server by setting parameter 'NTP Server' to the IP address of a NTP Server.
By default, the Microsoft Windows 2000 machine will synchronise to the specified NTP time server every 8 hours (or 3 times a day), which may not be enough to maintain accurate synchronisation. The period can be reduced by setting the 'Period' parameter to how many times a day synchronisation is required. Setting the period to 48 will activate synchronisation with the NTP server once every half hour.
Windows 2000 can also be configured to act as an NTP server by setting the 'Local NTP' parameter to '1'.
As well as synchronising Microsoft Windows servers and workstations, NTP can also be used to synchronise network devices, such as hubs, switches and routers. Any network device that can synchronise to a NTP server can be pointed to the Windows server to achieve time synchronisation. In this way the whole network and accompanying infrastructure can be synchronised.
Dave Evans is involved in the development of NTP Server synchronisation solutions to ensure accurate time on PC's and computer systems. Dave has developed dedicated NTP server systems, NTP synchronised digital clock systems and atomic clock time synchronisation products. Click here to find out more about NTP Server Systems.