NTP on Enterasys switches   Filed Under: Networks

Setting SNTP

Enterasys switches support SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) that is more or less the same than NTP but with some missing internal algorithms. If you want more information about the difference between NTP and SNTP check:

What is NTP?
NTP vs SNTP

First of all we need to enable sntp as a client

set sntp client unicast

Then we set the sntp server where we are going to check the time

set sntp server 10.10.1.1

You can setup precedence to the server in case you have more than one by appending the command precedence.

set sntp server 10.10.1.1 precedence 1

Note: Securestack C3, C2, B3, B2, A2; D-Series, G-Series, I-Series

In these type of switches the switch needs to have a host IP address ("set ip address ...") in order for SNTP to work in the switch. You may find this problem if you have the switch configured for routing and has layer 3 interfaces. The IP address of the host doesn’t need to be in any subnet in your network and neither needs to be able to connect to the SNTP server, just need to be present.

To check the configuration of SNTP on the switch use the command

show sntp

An example of the output will be:

SNTP Version: 3
Current Time: THU JUL 09 12:52:20 2009
Timezone: '', offset from UTC is 1 hours and 0 minutes (summertime)
Client Mode: unicast
Broadcast Delay: 3000 microseconds
Broadcast Count: 0
Poll Interval: 512 seconds
Poll Retry: 1
Poll Timeout: 5 seconds
SNTP Poll Requests: 8
Last SNTP Update: THU JUL 09 12:52:10 2009
Last SNTP Request: THU JUL 09 12:52:09 2009
Last SNTP Status: Success

SNTP-Server       Precedence       Status
-------------------------------------------
10.10.1.1           1            Active

Setting Timezone and Daylight saving time

To configure the timezone for your switch use the command

set timezone name [hour]

Where hour is the time difference in respect to UTC time.

set timezone GMT 0

After we have configured the timezone we will need to enable the summertime light saving using the command

set summertime enable

To configure the recurring dates where the times changes use the command

set summertime recurring last Sunday March 3:00 last Sunday October 3:00 60

To check the timezone and summertime configuration on the switch type the commands

show timezone
show summertime

Where 60 is the time in minutes to offset daylight savings time.

Example output of show timezone

Admin Config timezone: 'GMT', offset from UTC is 0 hours and 0 minutes
Oper  Config timezone: '', offset from UTC is 1 hours and 0 minutes (summertime)

Example output of show summertime

Summertime is enabled and set to ''
Start : SUN MAR 29 03:00:00 2009
End   : SUN OCT 25 03:00:00 2009
Offset: 60 minutes (1 hours 0 minutes)
Recurring: yes, starting at 3:00 of the last Sunday of March and ending at 3:00 
 of the last Sunday of October

Tags: enterasys, ntp, summertime, switches, timezone