NETGEAR switches do not have a built-in real-time clock. However, you can use NTP to get the time from a public NTP server over the Internet. You may need permission from those public time servers. The following steps configure NTP using the CLI on a fully managed switch. For information about using the Main user interface (UI) to configure an NTP server, see How do I set the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server with the Main UI on my fully managed switch?.
To configure NTP using CLI commands on a fully managed switch:
- Configure the NTP server IP address. The IP address can be either from the public NTP server or your own. You can search the Internet to locate the public server. The servers available could be listed in domain-name format instead of address format. In such a case, use the ping command on your computer to find the server’s IP address. The following example configures the NTP server domain name to time-a.netgear.com.
(Netgear Switch) (Config)#sntp server time-a.netgear.com
- After configuring the IP address, enable NTP client mode.
(Netgear Switch) (Config)#ntp broadcast client
- After NTP client mode is enabled, the client waits for the polling interval to send the query to the server. The default value is approximately 1 minute. After this period, issue the
show ntp statuscommand to confirm that the time has been received. The time will be used in all logging messages.
(Netgear Switch)#show ntp statusassocid=0 status=0638 leap_none, sync_ntp, 3 events, no_sys_peer,
system peer: ec2-52-20-169-152.compute-1.amazonaws.com:123
system peer mode: client
leap indicator: 00
stratum: 6
log2 precision: -22
root delay: 120.088
root dispersion: 16.687
reference ID: 0x3414a998
reference time: ec240922.9cd920e8 Thu, Jul 17 2025 23:43:30.612
system jitter: 2.617447
clock jitter: 1.503
clock wander: 0.094
broadcast delay: 3.000
symm. auth. delay: 0