How to compare an ntp server’s time to the server’s time

In Linux, ntpdate -q will query a remote server. Nagios' check_ntp script essentially does this for monitoring.

In older versions of Windows, I'd used ported version of ntp before. If you require a Windows specific solution, someone else may be able to contribute further.

After some more research it seems "fudging" the stratum level of a network source is not possible. So I moved on and tried dtoubeli's answer. To my surprise, simply making my local time server a stratum level 2 (equal to the 3rd party device) did not always cause it to be the preferred time source. My local ntpd would still rule them both as "false ticks". For what reason, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing because they were the only two time sources, and their times were so far off.

The biggest problem here is the fact that my 3rd party device doesn't seem to hold a very consistent time, in fact it fluctuates a lot. The solution to my problem was adding several other accurate time sources (pool.ntp.org) to my /etc/ntp.conf. Now my local server is always chosen as the preferred time source, often times despite having a higher stratum level than some of the servers in the pool.