NTP in the Internet

NTP in the Internet  Used for research, services, air traffic control, stock trading, and many corporate networks  Public NTP servers operated by national standards labs worldwide NTP Protocol Versions  NTPv3 is the official standard specified in RFC 1305  NTPv4 extends NTPv3 but has no single defining specification yet  SNTPv4 is a compatible subset for simple clients and servers Importance of Common Algorithms    Early NTP specs architecture implementation separated from But Internet NTP servers are now a tightly coupled system So common algorithms are needed for stability, especially for clock discipline  NTPv4 reference implementation contains carefully engineered algorithms  These algorithms likely need to be standardized going forward Widespread Adoption  NTPv4 reference implementation is a product of many years of volunteer work  Compatible with but extends previous versions  NTP is likely the continuously running application protocol  Widely deployed on hosts and routers across the Internet longest Internet Availability  NTPv4 reference implementation and docs available for free at ntp.org  Ported to many architectures from PCs to supercomputers  Build process is automated and requires minimal system configuration  Online resources include technical articles, news, and discussion forums Highlights  NTPv3 is the official standard but NTPv4 widely used in practice  NTP algorithms are crucial for stability in the Internet  Widespread adoption for critical functions like finance and air traffic control  NTPv4 reference implementation available and runs on most architectures  Global infrastructure of public servers plus many private deployments