Hi - What's ³ntpq²?

On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:24:33 -0700, Edith C Bennington wrote
(in article <281020072224333872%Edith1105@Seattle.Wash>):

> Hi - What's ³ntpq²? Right when my Mac starts up I get a message that
> asks if they can connect to ³ntpq². I'vebeen clicking ALLOW. Is it
> really necessary and what happens if I don't allow?
> Thank you.
> Edith B

Edith,

I've never had this issue before. But a little Googling tells me that ntpq is
a program that your Mac uses to query a NTP Server.

NTP stands for Network Time Protocol. Basically, this allows your computer to
check that its time is accurate to the time that other computers are using.

My *guess* is that you have Set Date and Time Automatically enabled in your
System Preferences. And possibly your computer's firewall enabled as well. If
this is the cause, then your computer is attempting to contact a network time
server and your firewall is asking if you want to allow this.

For most individual use, having your computer time synced to other computers
is not critical. So I would say that unless you are doing something very
special, you should be able to disable Set Date and Time Automatically, and
this should eliminate you having to allow firewall access for ntpq on
startup. Of course, your computer's clock will start to drift off of the
correct time. After a year, it might be off as much as a minute or two!

For the computers I administer, I generally keep the Set Date and Time
Automatically disabled.

StephenC