I think it's just you
# ntpdate -q time.apple.com
server 17.253.82.253, stratum 1, offset +0.044020, delay 0.06635
server 17.253.82.125, stratum 1, offset +0.045065, delay 0.06586
server 17.253.16.125, stratum 1, offset +0.044869, delay 0.05829
6 Sep 15:25:18 ntpdate[65639]: adjust time server 17.253.16.125 offset +0.044869 secRandom thought. Are you taking into account relativistic effects? What is your velocity relative to the Earth's inertial frame?
This works fine for me:
import socket
import struct
import time
NTP_SERVER = "time.apple.com"
NTP_PORT = 123
TIME1970 = 2208988800
client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
data = b'\x1b' + 47 \* b'\0'
client.sendto(data, (NTP_SERVER, NTP_PORT))
data, addr = client.recvfrom(1024)
if data:
t = struct.unpack('!12I', data)[10]
t -= TIME1970
print("Current time:", time.ctime(t))So as askbjoernhansen helpfully pointed out, I can't actually just look at the reference timestamp and use that. I was a bit hasty when putting this together, I didn't initially read the spec, I just looked at the NTP response in tcpdump, saw that "reference timestamp" looks about right, and went with that. I now know how to compute the actual offset I'm supposed to use, and I'll implement that instead. That computation doesn't involve the reference timestamp. Still curious why the reference timestamp on this particular timeserver is stuck at that particular time, though. If anyone knows anything about this, do let us know!
Perhaps you have just stumbled upon a way to make time stand still, in which case you’ll never see any of these replies.
$ sntp -n 1 time.apple.com | grep t1
t1: E8A36E57.9BB5D031 (3903024727.608242999)
# Subtract delta from unix time epoch to NTP epoch
# NTP epoch is January 1, 1900, Unix epoch is January 1, 1970
$ date -r $(expr 3903024727 - 2208988800)
Wed Sep 6 14:32:07 PDT 2023
Just took a look at time across Cloudflare, System76, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, AWS and NIST. Looks like Facebook has the best time at this point.
MS Name/IP address Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample
===============================================================================
^- time.cloudflare.com 3 6 37 5 -2135us[-2132us] +/- 18ms
^- time.cloudflare.com 3 6 37 3 -1514us[-1511us] +/- 18ms
^- virginia.time.system76.c> 2 6 37 4 -2250us[-2247us] +/- 54ms
^- ohio.time.system76.com 2 6 37 2 -4525us[-4522us] +/- 42ms
^- oregon.time.system76.com 2 6 37 3 +742us[ +745us] +/- 30ms
^? 52.148.114.188 3 6 37 3 -544us[ -541us] +/- 124ms
^? defra1-ntp-004.aaplimg.c> 1 6 37 3 -1297us[-1294us] +/- 79ms
^? time4.facebook.com 1 6 37 4 -73us[ -71us] +/- 36ms
^? ec2-54-81-127-33.compute> 4 6 37 2 -369us[ -366us] +/- 35ms
^? time-a-wwv.nist.gov 1 6 17 42 +5816us[+5858us] +/- 24ms
You are mixing up the 'reference time' and the bits of the NTP packet you are supposed to use to actually set the time. The reference time is not it.