# Observation on $5 a month NTP servers **URL:** \ **Category:** Server operators\ **Created:** [June 22, 2017, 7:52pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244 "2017-06-22T19:52:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jpp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/jpp/32/103_2.png) [@jpp](https://community.ntppool.org/u/jpp)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2017, 7:52pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244/1 "2017-06-22T19:52:29Z")
For the past 2 months I’ve been running two linode instances as pool severs. [tick.no-such-agency.net](http://tick.no-such-agency.net) and [tock.no-such-agency.net](http://tock.no-such-agency.net). They are the smallest instances linode offers 1cpu, 1TB transfer, 1G ram and cost $5 a month each, running ntpsec. I’ve got both of them set to 1G for both IP4 and IP6. So far I’m seeing about 550GB/month of traffic on each node. Pretty good stability and accuracy (unlike the Digital Ocean nodes I tried which had +/- 100ms excursions). I’ve been very pleased with the results, for $120 a year I’m adding a lot of capacity to the pool (plus I’m using them for monitoring some work stuff so really the pool use isn’t costing anything I wasn’t already spending). A few interesting observations. IPv4 traffic is fairly steady at 1.5 Mb/sec with a minimal time of day component to the traffic volume. IPv6 traffic varies on a 24hr cycle, dropping by 50% at around 08:00 UTC and peaking between 22:00 and 02:00 UTC. However IPv6 volume is a fraction of IPv4, averaging only 200Kb/sec. CPU utilisation on the small instance at the current traffic level is ~20%. No significant difference between the east and west coast servers in terms of traffic. Overall traffic grew almost immediately with speed changes and then climbed ~10% over the first month and less than 5% in the second. ---
**Author:** ![tmberg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/tmberg/32/69_2.png) [@tmberg](https://community.ntppool.org/u/tmberg)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244/2 "2017-06-24T20:13:40Z")
Digital Ocean works fine for me. ---
**Author:** ![mnordhoff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/mnordhoff/32/1470_2.png) [@mnordhoff](https://community.ntppool.org/u/mnordhoff)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2017, 10:41pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244/3 "2017-06-24T22:41:14Z")
DigitalOcean _used_ to work fine for me. (As close to perfect as a typical VPS can be, anyway.) Then… it **didn’t**. I didn’t do anything, as far as i know, but one day the clock started swinging up to about 120 ms. (Current version of NTP reference implementation.) I pegged the poll interval at 8 seconds – not without permission, of course – and it’s “fine” now. ---
**Author:** ![tmberg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/tmberg/32/69_2.png) [@tmberg](https://community.ntppool.org/u/tmberg)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244/4 "2017-06-25T21:17:59Z")
Where do/did you have your droplet/s? I got mine in Netherlands. ---
**Author:** ![jpp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.ntppool.org/jpp/32/103_2.png) [@jpp](https://community.ntppool.org/u/jpp)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://community.ntppool.org/t/observation-on-5-a-month-ntp-servers/244/5 "2017-06-26T22:25:30Z")
California and and US east coast. Both showed +/- 100 or more swings. Linode has been far better for me.