Dell X1052 External NTP

Question

I have a Dell X1052 network switch and I am trying to setup SNTP. I don't have a time server on my network and my SonicWall TZ400 doesn't seem to work as an NTP server.

How do I get SNTP working to an external IP? I have changed the Clock Source to "SNTP", I've enabled the four options under SNTP Global Settings (Receive Broadcast Servers Updates, Receive Anycast Servers Updates, Receive Unicast Servers Updates, and Poll Unicast Requests). I've added a bunch of IPs including ones from time.apple.com, http://www.pool.ntp.org, and several others from the web but after I add them, the Status just says "Down" and I never get the date and time to update.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Okay, I spoke with Dell support and the issue was related to routing. The switch couldn't get to the Internet to hit the external SNTP servers. We used putty to connect to the switch and then tried to ping the external SNTP server IP which didn't work.

Back in the web interface, you can do the following to fix it:

1. Click on "Network Administration", "Route Settings", and then "IPv4 Route Settings"
2. Beside "IPv4 Routes Table", Click "Edit"
3. Click "Add"
4. Enter "0.0.0.0" into the "Destination IPv4 Prefix" textbox
5. Enter "0.0.0.0" into the "Network Mask" textbox
6. Enter the default gateway (Example: 192.168.0.1) into the "Next Hop" textbox
7. Click "OK"

After that, the switch was able to obtain the time correctly.