Q: appletimesrv.exe issues steady stream of NTP requests
I'm running Windows 7 Pro SP1 from a Boot Camp partition in Parallels Desktop 8 on OS X 10.9.5 on an iMac (27", Mid-2010).
I have observed that within Windows the service AppleTimeSrv.exe issues a steady stream of NTP requests. I have observed the requests using WireShark, and I have confirmed they are coming from AppleTimeSrv.exe because they stop when I stop the service and start up again when I start the service back up.
To be more specific, an NTP packet is sent every 2 seconds to one of the time.apple.com IP addresses. It cycles through all of the time.apple.com addresses (run "nslookup time.apple.com" in a shell to see what they are), pauses 7 seconds, and then starts over again. This never stops.
This is happening despite the fact that in both Windows and OS X, I have the Date and Time settings set to use a different, local time server.
This raises a few questions:
Is it normal for AppleTimeSrv.exe to send this many NTP requests, and if so, why?
If it is normal, is it necessary to have AppleTimeSrv.exe running when running from my Boot Camp partition in Parallels (I realize this isn't a strictly Apple software question)?
If it is normal, and it is necessary, is there a way to specify which time server it queries?
Additional note: Our organizational firewall may be blocking some or all outgoing NTP requests in an attempt to mitigate NTP DDOS attacks.
Thanks.
iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Posted on Oct 29, 2014 2:47 PM