NTP on VDS for Killing Floor 2 patch version 1051

Ask questions about dedicated servers here and we and other users will do our best to answer them. Please also refer to the self-help section for tutorials and answers to the most commonly asked questions.
Post Reply
User avatar
oldschool
A semi-regular
A semi-regular
Posts: 28
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40BgXanDqOYoVCYFDSTfHA
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:46 am
Location: East Coast
Contact:

NTP on VDS for Killing Floor 2 patch version 1051

Post by oldschool »

Do you guys block NTP on VDS?

Seems I am no longer able to run my KF2 servers with new patch.
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/f ... -coast-usa
Image
User avatar
Edge100x
Founder
Founder
Posts: 12945
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2002 11:04 pm
Location: Seattle
Contact:

Re: NTP on VDS for Killing Floor 2 patch version 1051

Post by Edge100x »

We do not straight-up block NTP anywhere. Many upstreams are set up to rate-limit or filter certain NTP traffic in specific ways, though, in many locations. The primary NIST servers are always whitelisted in any filter set that we request.

It would not be a good design decision for a game server application to be able to run its own NTP client, or to try to set the system time. It's just not at all standard behavior for applications to do this. It would be similar to integrating a resolver into the application, instead of using system DNS resolution.

Tripwire released a patched version that fixed this later in the afternoon, but hinted that they may experiment with NTP later on. I would strongly recommend to them that they drop the plan to use NTP entirely. I'm not sure why they would need globally accurate time, but they should find another way to go about implementing their plan. They should also keep in mind that keeping accurate time, and compensating for the local clock being off/drifting/being changed, is actually pretty complicated.
Post Reply