NTP software - which is the better?

DrTeeth

Meinberg NTP or Dimension 4? IIRC, one does not run on Win 10, but I use Win 7 x64 so that does not count. I am interested in accuracy for WSJT-X JTx modes and WSPR.

73 fer 2016 de Guy G4DWV/4X1LT

Bill W2PKY

NetTime works on Win 10 and keeps my Surface Pro exactly on time. Use Time.Is to verify.

Andrew VK5CV

BktTimeSync works well with NTP pools and also GPS if available.
Good for remote areas on digital modes if there is no internet access.
Andrew VK5CV

http://www.maniaradio.it/en/bkttimesync.html

Bob - G3WKW

I use Meinberg and it still appears to be working after the Win10 upgrade.

DrTeeth

Bill, Thanks for the link to Time.Is. That will be very useful indeed and will enable me to answer my own question if I need to change my current software (Dimension 4).

Walt - KZ1F

I think dimension 4 was like the first DOS TSR, its ancient. The are plenty of true NTP client for Windows. If you go into you window clock/ time zonecapplet and say adjust Tim internet Tim and choose time?.nist.gov then issue nstat -s and see if port 37 or 13 is in use, that will yell you whether you have ntp or w32tm. But the thread question is weird, I thik,. If you have a true NTP client it conforms to rfc 1305. The time source its pointing to has a 200ps accuracy.

DrTeeth

Hi Walt,

The weirdness of the thread title did not escape me, LOL. I just had to ask as hams have an opinion on *everything*.

rfoust

Nice link, haven't seen that time.is site before.

Randy Diddel

I use Meinberg on Windows 10 with no issues.

Walt - KZ1F

I agree. Even at those times I am running Windows I've noticed to the split sec, I mean the instant of the tone on WWV the clock goes to ??:??:00. I don't know if a person can discern a ms but transitioning to 0 seconds is instantaneous with the pulse restarting on WWW so I was curioius about Robbies claim that didn't work for him. But I also always go into the Windows time applet and specify time.nist.gov. I just assumed since it was there it was ntpd running at that site. Essentially, I never questioned it. But knowing how to adjust the windows update freq is good stuff.

WA2SQQ

I've been unsuccessful getting WSJT, JT-65vAlert and LOG4OM to communicate. Someone suggested using the rewritten version that HB9HQX released. This morning I checked it out and discovered that it includes several NTP methods, and it also is capable of writing directly to several logging programs.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jt65hfhb9hqxedi/

DrTeeth

Bob, there are some REALLY big improvements to the JT65 decoders that will really be of benefit on HF. I do not know if they will be available in other JT programs.

JTAlert channels the log info from WSJT-X and writes it to Log4OM. I would not give up yet as it is very simple to sort out (I did it!). You have probably made one of those little mistakes that you will not be able to see as you are looking too hard.

I would try the JTAlert group as the author is very responsive. The logging tab in settings is self explanatory so check that first.

If you want screenshots of my settings, contact me via my qrz.com email addy and just let me know what you want. It has been a while since I have been on the air (ill-health), but things all worked FB the last time I was.

WA2SQQ

So the HB9 version allegedly uses k1JT's code, and the last revision was on 12/15. The overall interface is slightly different, but functionally the same. I've been using K1JT's version and I'm amazed how well it works. It also includes WSPR. Are you saying that Joe's version is in some way better?

DrTeeth

I would not use anything else. Does it have JT9?

Duane N9DG

I'll post this to this thread as well since this discussion is more directly related to Windows time sync. And if anyone wants to give it a shot, they too can try it as way to keep a Windows box's time within 1 sec of NTP.

The technique describe here I used with great success at a former employer where I needed to keep a rather large collection video servers and other machines in the test lab to all be within 1 second of each other, plus video timecode "house time", and then ultimately NTP.

I have been able to hold Windows clocks to within 1 second with just a registry setting tweak alone, no 3rd party NTP client needed.

What I have done is change the value of this key to something fairly frequent, few tens of minutes or maybe once an hour  vs. the only once a week that Windows NTP defaults to (All the standard Windows registry hacking disclaimers apply....):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetservicesW32TimeTimeProvidersNtpClientSpecialPollInterval

The registry value is in seconds, basically the key describes how often Windows pings the NTP server for a new time update.

After changing the value you do need to restart the W32Time service, or reboot, for the new setting to take effect.

And I don't know if this is still workable on Win 8.x or 10. Have not had a need to try to do that with those OSes. It certainly works fine on Win XP and Vista and 7.

Also this will not work if your computer is part of a Windows active directory domain. Which should not be the case for most in home shack PCs.

WA2SQQ

I used this method while using XP, but was unable to figure out how to do it with win 7. It worked just fine. I was also thinking of a command line method that could be used with a shortcut that would jointly start the digital program and resent the time.