Level of experience: advanced home user. I'm a computer programmer, but not a network engineer, so I have only a rudimentary understanding of the technology involved. But I can understand these topics quickly if I know what to look for.
Problem: for years now none of my home PCs (Windows boxes all) have been able to use internet time synchronization. Which is a shame, the clocks do drift significantly. In fact, this was even BEFORE I bought a Microtik router, so my ISP is actually a prime suspect, but I haven't been able to pin it to them yet...
Lately I got pissed off by this again and started investigating more. I downloaded some sort of tool for debugging NTP and noticed something odd:
When the w32time service is running, it's allocating port 123 and the separate tool cannot use it. So the tool instead uses another random port and THAT WORKS. However when I stop the service, port 123 becomes available, the tool takes it, and then the tool stops working too.
So obviously, something is blocking port 123, but what?
My first thought was my ISP, however I'm behind a NAT, so the port number visible to my ISP will probably not be 123. That leaves either my own PC or the router. I've already tried disabling the firewall on my PC (I only have the Windows built in one), but no luck. So that leaves my hAP ac2 as the primary suspect. Unfortunately I don't know it well enough to find such a setting, if it's there at all.
So - does anyone here know if RouterOS is blocking traffic on port 123?