--- title: NTP Monitoring: Time Server Uptime & Drift description: NTP monitoring by WatchFor. Query your time servers from around the world, verify they answer with valid time, and get alerts when an NTP server stops responding. Included from the Pro plan. canonical: https://watchfor.io/ntp-monitoring --- # NTP Monitoring for Time Servers That Can't Drift Clock drift breaks certificates, logins and logs in confusing ways. WatchFor queries your NTP servers from several locations and alerts when one drifts or dies. [Get started for free](/auth/sign-up)[View pricing](/pricing) ## Everything you need to trust your clocks Purpose-built checks for Network Time Protocol services. ### Real NTP queries Every check sends genuine NTP requests — multiple samples per check — and validates the responses. A server that's up but answering garbage fails the check. ### Offset & jitter measurement Each check measures clock offset and jitter against the server, so you can alert on drift itself — not just on downtime. ### Stratum & sync validation Stratum level and leap/unsynchronized flags are checked on every query — a server that lost its own upstream sync is flagged before it spreads bad time. ### Response-time tracking See how quickly each time server answers over time, and spot creeping slowness before clients start timing out. ### Multi-region checks Query your NTP servers from several locations worldwide, so a routing issue in one region is never mistaken for a dead server. ### Public pool or your own servers Monitor pool.ntp.org members, your ISP's time service, or your own NTP servers, as long as they answer from the internet. Probes inside your own network aren't available yet. ### Confirmed alerts A failure is verified from multiple regions before an incident opens, so you're paged for real outages, not blips. ### Uptime history & SLA Availability history and response-time trends for every time server, ready for audits and internal SLAs. ## A closer look Alert on clock offset, a server that is not synced, or a high stratum. Each check stores the offset, delay and stratum of every sample. ## Why monitor NTP at all? Time is the dependency nobody thinks about until it breaks. When clocks drift or a time server dies, TLS handshakes fail, Kerberos and MFA logins get rejected, distributed databases disagree, and log timelines become useless for debugging. NTP monitoring keeps the failure visible long before those symptoms appear. [Start monitoring now](/auth/sign-up) Catch dead or misbehaving time servers before clock drift spreads Alert on offset, jitter and stratum — sync quality, not just uptime Protect TLS, Kerberos and MFA flows that reject skewed clocks Keep log timestamps trustworthy for debugging and forensics Monitor public pool members and your own internet-facing time servers Verify real NTP responses, not just server reachability Response-time trends from multiple regions worldwide Alerts to Slack, PagerDuty, email and 13 other channels Uptime history for compliance and capacity planning ## How NTP monitoring works From setup to alert in a couple of minutes. 1 ### Add your time server Enter the hostname or IP of any NTP server — a pool member, your provider's, or an internal one reachable from the internet. 2 ### We query it on schedule WatchFor sends real NTP requests at the interval you choose and validates that a well-formed time response comes back. 3 ### Failures get confirmed If a query fails, it is re-checked every 30 seconds from other locations — only a confirmed failure opens an incident. 4 ### You get alerted with detail The alert tells you which server, from where, and since when — with response-time history to back it up. ## Who needs NTP monitoring Anywhere correct time is quietly load-bearing. ### Infrastructure & platform teams Fleets of servers sync against a few NTP servers. If one dies silently, drift accumulates until TLS and auth start failing in confusing ways. Monitoring turns that slow-motion outage into an obvious alert. ### Financial and regulated systems Trading, payments and audit systems have strict timestamp accuracy requirements. Keep evidence that your time sources were up, responsive and monitored around the clock. ### NTP pool and ISP operators If you serve time to others, downtime is public. Independent multi-region monitoring shows your servers as your users see them, not as your LAN sees them. ### Security-sensitive environments Kerberos, MFA and certificate validation all reject skewed clocks. Monitoring the time source removes a whole class of 'nobody can log in' mysteries. ## NTP monitoring FAQ Common questions about monitoring time servers. [All questions→](/faq)[Ask us directly](/contact) What is NTP monitoring? NTP monitoring queries a Network Time Protocol server on a schedule and checks the answer: whether it replies, how far its clock is off, and whether it reports itself as synchronized. If the server stops answering or starts serving bad time, an incident opens before dependent systems drift. Why does a dead NTP server matter? Can I monitor pool.ntp.org servers? Can it detect clock drift, not just downtime? Does the check validate the response, or just connectivity? How often are NTP servers checked, and on which plans? Can I monitor an internal time server? How do alerts reach my team? ## Put your time servers under watch Add an NTP monitor in under a minute. NTP monitoring is included from the Pro plan. [Get started for free](/auth/sign-up)[View documentation](/docs/monitors/performance#ntp) --- Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/ntp-monitoring · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt