To evaluate how useful/useless adjusted network time is, it could make sense to collect samples?
Be aware that time offsets are expected to be off, as some peers will send the network time as their own time, see commit 14ba286556faad794f288ef38493c540382897cb. Also, offsets of 1sec (or a few secs) are expected due to second-precision rounding errors and network delays. Also, larger offsets are expected for some peers that did a -reindex, see commit 0ac42c49f7bfc1e158a83c6d98bc465b06894e8a.
A patch that adds getpeerinfo timeoffset to -netinfo, if helpful to anyone: https://github.com/jonatack/bitcoin/commits/netinfo-time-offset
For the data to be meaningful, it would ideally also include the ua-string
Going to close this, as this is not an actionable issue. Though, comments are still welcome.
$ bitcoin-cli getpeerinfo | jq .[].timeoffset | sort -n | uniq -c
1 -43374
2 -1879
1 -9
4 -4
5 -3
5 -2
21 -1
53 0
1 1
1 2
1 57
1 108
1 166
<details> <summary>with subver</summary>
$ jq -r 'sort_by(.timeoffset) | map({timeoffset: .timeoffset | tostring, subver: .subver}) | map(.timeoffset + " " + .subver) | .[]'
-43374 /Satoshi:0.16.3/
-1879 /nodes.mom.market:0.2/
-1879 /nodes.mom.market:0.2/
-9 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-4 /Satoshi:0.21.0/
-4 /dsn.tm.kit.edu/bitcoin:0.9.99/
-4 /Satoshi:21.99.0/
-4 /Satoshi:0.21.1/
-3 /Satoshi:0.14.0/
-3 /Satoshi:0.14.0/
-3 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-3 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-3 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-2 /Satoshi:0.20.99/
-2 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-2 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-2 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-2 /Satoshi:22.0.0/Knots:20211108/
-1 /Satoshi:0.21.0/
-1 /seeder:0.0001/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:0.17.0.1/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0(Bitch)/
-1 /Satoshi:23.99.0(@dunxen)/
-1 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
-1 /Satoshi:0.16.0/
-1 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:0.18.0/
0 /seeder:0.0001/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
0 /Satoshi:0.21.1/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
0 /Satoshi:0.21.0/
0 /Satoshi:0.21.0/
0 /Satoshi:0.21.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /dsn.tm.kit.edu/bitcoin:0.9.99/
0 /bitnodes.earn.com:0.1/
0 /bitnodes.earn.com:0.1/
0 /dsn.tm.kit.edu/bitcoin:0.9.99/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /dsn.tm.kit.edu/bitcoin:0.9.99/
0 /dsn.tm.kit.edu/bitcoin:0.9.99/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
0 /Satoshi:0.16.1/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:23.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:0.19.0.1/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /btcwire:0.5.0/bitmarkd-payment-lightclient:0.1.0/
0
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.99.0/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:23.99.0(@jon)/
0 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
0 /Satoshi:23.99.0(@jon)/
0 /bitnodes.io:0.2/
1 /Satoshi:22.0.0(Samourai Dojo 1.12.1)/
2 /Satoshi:0.18.1/
57 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
108 /Satoshi:22.0.0/
166 /Satoshi:0.19.0.1/
</details>
Looks like the data so far shows that all offsets are within 5 minutes, or they are so large (12 h for the 16.3 node) that time adjustment won't work, or they are from clients that likely do not use our time adjustment logic or code (mom.market), or we don't know whether adjusted time had an effect (all outbound nodes with user agent Satoshi:22.x or earlier)
Looks like the data so far shows that all offsets are within 5 minutes, or they are so large (12 h for the 16.3 node) that time adjustment won't work, or they are from clients that likely do not use our time adjustment logic or code (mom.market), or we don't know whether adjusted time had an effect (all outbound nodes with user agent Satoshi:22.x or earlier)
Yes, that's a good summary of what I've been seeing so far.