> Stratum 1, in the ntp world, is a source that's connected to an > official source of time (the so-called Stratum 0). The CMOS clock > isn't connected to NIST, therefore it can't be considered Stratum 1 by > any stretch of the imagination. > Also, Stratum 1, in telco, has certain performance requirements. ... It's worth pointing out that "stratum 1" in the ntp world doesn't say anything about quality. The ntp stratum levels form a tree. Within a tree, lower stratum is better. Given two trees, the root of one may be much better than the other. The stratum-3 branches on the good tree may be more accurate than the root of the not-so-good tree. ntpd supports a wide collection of clocks. Some are accurate to a few microseconds, some are only good to tens of milliseconds. The protocol includes an estimate of the quality so the client can pick the best clock. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.