Time Is Running Out for NTP
infoworld.com
Time Is Running Out for NTP
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#2why dont dns servers provide this capability? seems like they are the most centralized of all the online services.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#3why dont dns servers provide this capability? seems like they are the most centralized of all the online services.
The problem isn't the service being provided, that's well handled. The problem is that the development team is woefully underfunded, incapable of keeping up with maintenance, security fixes, new design, documentation, testing, etc.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#4I thought NTP was a protocol, not a piece of software. Is the article conflating them, or is there only one single implementation of it that everyone relies upon?
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#5Article doesn't bother to mention that there are completely different projects which implement NTP servers with varying levels of functionality (openntpd, chrony, ntpsec, ntimed). And while the pool.ntp.org system is a nice scheme, it's hardly a global necessity. You can fairly easily get a stratum 1 server going on your own infrastructure. IMHO, too much of NTP relies on GPS, but that's a separate matter.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#6I thought NTP was a protocol, not a piece of software. Is the article conflating them, or is there only one single implementation of it that everyone relies upon?
There's OpenNTPD which is maintained by the OpenBSD/OpenSSH developers. It has been poorly criticized for its focus on security rather than absolute precision, but it's more than adequate for most peoples timekeeping needs.
It has privilege separation, sandboxing and if your OS/distribution uses LibreSSL it implements HTTPS constraints.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#7Classic NTP is hardly the only game in town. For example, see the NTPsec work in progress: https://www.ntpsec.org/ which I'll probably transition to someday, maybe even get an el-cheapo GPS receiver now that I'm not effectively living in a basement.
And I've personally be using chrony for a while, although my needs are significantly less than whatever level of accuracy it provides. There are some other clients out there as well, such as OpenBSD's OpenNTPD, although I have a vague memory of it having issues of precision, congruent with the distribution's focus on security.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#8Surprised that the whole piece didn't mention roughtime, a timesetting protocol developed by Adam Langley with much better security properties (NTP basically has no security):
https://www.imperialviolet.org/2016/09/19/roughtime.html
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#9why dont dns servers provide this capability? seems like they are the most centralized of all the online services.
Separation of concerns.
Re: Time Is Running Out for NTP
#10If you care that much about accuracy you should take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Time_Protocol ... "IEEE 1588 is designed for local systems requiring accuracies beyond those attainable using NTP".