Selecting An NTP Server - Fortinet Documentation Library

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Selecting an NTP Server

We recommend that you specify NTP pool servers appropriate for your geographic location. Selecting a pool server means that you are specifying an alias that is assigned by the NTP Pool Project to a list of time servers for a region. Thus, NTP pool servers are specified by geography. The following table shows the naming convention for servers specified by continent:

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Worldwide - pool.ntp.org

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Asia - asia.pool.ntp.org

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Europe - europe.pool.ntp.org

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North America - north-america.pool.ntp.org

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Oceania - oceania.pool.ntp.org

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South America - south-america.pool.ntp.org

To use the continent-based NTP pool servers for Europe, for example, you could specify the following pool servers in FortiADC’s time Configuration screen (tab):

0.europe.pool.ntp.org

1.europe.pool.ntp.org

2.europe.pool.ntp.org

You can also specify servers by country. So, for example, to specify a UK based time server pool, you would use:

0.uk.pool.ntp.org

1.uk.pool.ntp.org

2.uk.pool.ntp.org

Or, for the US, you would use:

0.us.pool.ntp.org

1.us.pool.ntp.org

2.us.pool.ntp.org

Be careful when using country based NTP pool servers, since some countries contain a very limited number of time servers. In these cases, it is best to use a mix of country and continent based pool servers. If a country has only one time server, then it is recommended you use a time server pool based in another nearby country that supports more servers, or use the continent based server pools.

For example, Japan has 6 (six) time servers as of the date this document was published. The organization that maintains time server pools recommends using the following to specify time server pools for Japanese locations:

2.jp.pool.ntp.org

0.asia.pool.ntp.org

2.asia.pool.ntp.org

For more information on choosing NTP pool servers, please see the NTP pool server web pages at:

http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/NTPPoolServers

For general information on the NTP Pool Project, please go to the project home page:

http://www.pool.ntp.org/