If you are operating a public available NTP server, for example when you’re going to join the NTP Pool Project, you probably want to test whether your server is working correctly. Either with a one-off measurement from hundreds of clients or continuously to keep track of its performance. You can use the RIPE Atlas measurement platform (Wikipedia) for both use cases. Here’s how:
Since almost two years I am running a RIPE Atlas Probe in my server room. It resides in an own security zone on a Palo Alto firewall (which also powers the probe via its USB port :)). With this post I publish a few traffic statistics about the RIPE Atlas Probe.
I just want to share my happiness about the RIPE Atlas measurements. If you have not heard about it yet, keep on reading. Following is a very basic overview of how the Atlas tool from the RIPE NCC can be used to test the connectivity of your own equipment.