# How to decide if a pool server is "Good Enough" to be in the pool **URL:** \ **Category:** Server operators\ **Created:** [August 20, 2026, 3:36am UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/how-to-decide-if-a-pool-server-is-good-enough-to-be-in-the-pool/4642 "2026-08-20T03:36:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![n1zyy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/n1zyy/32/338_2.png) [@n1zyy](https://community.ntppool.org/u/n1zyy)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/how-to-decide-if-a-pool-server-is-good-enough-to-be-in-the-pool/4642/7 "2026-08-22T03:04:03Z")
> [@gombadi](#): > > Recently for example my testing is seeing a server that has had a score between 10 ~ 12 for the last few weeks. It does not seem to climb higher because the clock offset is quite often high (about 80ms) but because the pool score is above 10 the ip address is still being provided to users. This smells to me like the server is struggling under load. I have a couple of servers in the pool in underserved regions that are doing thousands of requests per second, and I had forgotten to disable ip\_conntrack on one of them. The table would fill up and drop connections, so monitoring would take it out of the pool, and the table would drain and it’d come back in. I hadn’t read the scoring code before, but I agree with your reading: 0.731 / 2.308 = 0.3167… seconds seems to be the point where step = 0. That’s higher than I would have thought, but I guess it’s the answer for what’s considered “Good Enough.” More generally, there was a pretty similar discussion a while back: > [@What makes an NTP server a good server, when is it 'good enough'?](https://community.ntppool.org/t/what-makes-an-ntp-server-a-good-server-when-is-it-good-enough/3604): > > So… in theory, NTP can achieve quite high accuracy—often far beyond what’s needed for most applications (like keeping my calendar in sync). But sometimes, applications demand much higher accuracy and precision. That got me thinking the other day… Is there anything definitive we can say about this? Can we really make any meaningful claims about the accuracy of public NTP servers? What level of accuracy should users expect from sources like time.windows.com, time.apple.com, or even our beloved NTP… For my own servers, I usually configure the list of servers by hand and expect offsets to be on the order of a couple milliseconds or less, but they’re generally running in well-connected data centers, or my home LAN where I’ve ended up with a growing collection of GNSS-locked stratum 1s. I assume some pool clients are things like a low-power device connected through an intermittent cellular connection which will limit how close they could get. --- _[View the full topic](https://community.ntppool.org/t/how-to-decide-if-a-pool-server-is-good-enough-to-be-in-the-pool/4642)._