Periodic traffic from Apple TV to Apple time servers every 2 seconds

[cinergi]

Hello,

My Apple TV 4 sends NTP requests to an Apple time server every 2 seconds. Here is a sample tcpdump output:

15:05:51.244459 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > usnyc3-ntp-001.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:05:53.247784 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > usnyc3-ntp-001.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:05:55.253560 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > uschi5-ntp-002.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:05:57.258931 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > uschi5-ntp-002.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:05:59.260445 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > uschi5-ntp-002.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:06:01.265923 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > uschi5-ntp-002.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
15:06:03.267810 IP <local Apple TV IP>.ntp > uschi5-ntp-002.aaplimg.com.ntp: NTPv4, Client, length 48
​

Oddly enough, there is no reply from the time server. Is this normal? It seems excessive to check the time server so often.

-cinergi

 

[benjitek]

It's normal.

 

[Rigby]

Oddly enough, there is no reply from the time server. Is this normal? It seems excessive to check the time server so often.

Looks like it's retrying because it doesn't receive a reply. Perhaps Apple's NTP server is temporarily unreachable.

 

[cinergi]

Looks like it's retrying because it doesn't receive a reply. Perhaps Apple's NTP server is temporarily unreachable.

The NTP servers are reachable via ping (I tried); they just don't seem to be responding to the NTP requests.

There is nothing special about my specific Apple TV 4, so I wonder whether they all exhibit this behavior, which would place a large strain on Apple's time servers! And for no discernible purpose, since there is no reply from the servers. I find it very strange.

-cinergi