🌍 Free Public Stratum 2 Server
NTP.navisdei.com is a free public Stratum 2 NTP server that aggregates time signals from carefully selected sources across the globe—from the USA and Europe to China and Japan. Most sources are academic institutions or science-focused agencies using specialized hardware to maintain Stratum 1 accuracy.
- Server is located in the Republic of Moldova, in Chișinău.
- Realistic service area: Republic of Moldova and Eastern Europe (due to network latency).
- General service area: Worldwide – because accurate time should know no borders.
- The server configuration is set to "Allow all" and has no access restrictions.
- Minsources: Set to the pool maximum of 12, meaning it merges signals from 12 different time sources for precision.
- Runs on a physical (non-virtual) Intel Xeon Linux server, dedicated to providing a stable and accurate public NTP service to the regional community.
- The list of time sources is regularly maintained, currently totaling 32 active sources—enough to consistently remain at Stratum 2. Many of these are Stratum 1 servers; however, when those temporarily lose connection to their hardware clock, they fall back to Stratum 2 (and downstream users may fall back to Stratum 3).
- Most active time sources are located in Europe.
- Officially listed on the Secondary Time Servers list at support.ntp.org.
- Participates in the global NTP pool at www.ntppool.org, often achieving a top score of 20.0.
- Load balancing and Stratum 2-only service are encouraged by most NTP administrators to ensure fair and efficient usage.
- The closer to Stratum 1, the better — for context, Stratum 0 represents the hardware sources such as GPS satellites and atomic clocks.
- This service is provided independently—no organization sponsors the bandwidth or hardware, and there are no affiliations.
- As of April 2025, this server has been running continuously for over 3 years, delivering precise time for an estimated 3%–5% of all .MD DNS zone NTP requests— with zero packet loss.
- According to ntppool.org, only about 10 servers are part of the .MD pool. This makes ntp.navisdei.com an important contributor to the national and regional NTP network.
- No authentication keys, subscriptions, or payments are required.
- And yes, it has a memorable DNS name: ntp.navisdei.com.
