NTP Offset Displayed In Nanoseconds

The command ntpq -c 'rv 0 offset' can be used to retrieve the current estimated time offset with nanosecond resolution, e.g.:

ntpq -c 'rv 0 offset'
offset=-0.000032

Please note the offset value is displayed in milliseconds, so in the example above the offset is 32 nanoseconds.

Extending the displayed offset from microsecond (up to at least ntp-4.2.6p5) to nanosecond resolution (somewhere in ntp-4.2.8) has been discussed on the NTP hackers mailing list:

• ntpq width output
  https://lists.ntp.org/pipermail/hackers/2014-August/006503.html

and earlier.

— Martin Burnicki martin.burnicki@meinberg.de 2019-06-14