IETF NTP Working Group

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Background and Charter
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely deployed and used in the Internet.
However, the standardization status of this protocol has lagged in the IETF.
RFC 1305 was published in March 1992 and remains unchanged and at Draft Standard status.
A good deal of work has been produced in the NTP community over the years, but this work has not been reflected back into the NTP specification.
The goal of this working group is to update the NTP protocol specification and advance the standardization status of NTP based on the extensive work from the NTP community.
A number of topics have been raised as potential work items for an update to NTP including support for IPv6, security considerations, automatic configuration, and algorithm improvements.
This working group will develop an NTPv4 specification based on the state of NTPv4 in the community.
This effort will maintain backwards compatibility with NTPv3.
Potentials further modifications and additions to the NTP protocol will be documented for possible further work beyond NTPv4.
The working group will complete the following tasks:
- Produce an NTPv4 Scope and Requirements Document
- Produce an NTPv4 Protocol Specification
- Produce an NTPv4 Algorithms Specification
- Produce an NTPv4 MIB
The official current charter can be found at
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ntp-charter.html .
Goals and Milestones:
Date |
What |
Dec 2007 |
WG Last Call NTP Protocol Specification |
Dec 2007 |
WG Last Call NTP MIB Specification |
Dec 2007 |
Draft of NTP Control Protocol - Informational RFC |
Mar 2008 |
WG Last Call NTP Autokey Specification - Informational RFC |
Mar 2008 |
WG Last Call NTP Control Protocol - Informational RFC |
--- |
--- |
Done |
Draft of NTP Autokey Specification - Informational RFC |
Done |
Draft of Scope and Requirements Document |
Done |
Draft of NTP Protocol Specification |
Done |
Draft of MIB Specification |
Done |
Draft of NTP Algorithms Specification |
--- |
--- |
Cancel |
WG Last Call Scope and Requirements Document (document canceled) |
Cancel |
WG Last Call NTP Algorithms Specification (document canceled) |
--- |
--- |
May 2006 |
WG Last Call NTP Algorithms Specification |
Sep 2005 |
WG Last Call Scope and Requirements Document |
Jul 2005 |
Initial Draft of NTP Algorithms Specification |
Jul 11 2005 |
Internet Draft Cut-off for initial document (-00) |
Jul 5 2005 |
Cutof for WG chair approval for WG document |
May 2005 |
Initial Draft of MIB Specification |
Mar 2005 |
Initial Draft of Scope and Requirements Document |
Jan 2005 |
NTP WG Charter Approved |
Nov 2004 |
NTP BOF at IETF 61 |
Updates
2007 Nov 20 update
Brian Haberman says:
The latest NTPv4 protocol specification has been published. This
revision should address all Last Call issues raised except for
additional text on the timing reference point. I did not see any
consensus on the mailing list on the text proposed by Rich Osman using
the LI as the reference point. Please review this version for all other
changes.
If you have comments on the reference point for the start time,
please post that to the mailing list.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-08.txt
2007 Jul 25 update
Brian Haberman says:
The minutes of the meeting have been posted to
http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/07jul/minutes/ntp.txt .
The latest version of the protocol spec is available in the I-D
repository.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-07.txt
2007 May 14 update
Brian Haberman says:
This version of the protocol specification incorporates all
comments received to date (to my knowledge). Please review. My plan is
to start a working group last call on this document in the next week or so.
A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-05.txt
2007 Jan 25 update
The editing team has produced a new draft based on all the comments received to date.
It is available in the Internet Drafts repository.
Please review this document and send any comments to
ntpwg@ntp.org .
Based on comments received, we will be proceeding to WG Last Call shortly.
A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the Network Time Protocol Working Group of the IETF.
Title : Network Time Protocol Version 4 Protocol And Algorithms Specification
Author(s): J. Burbank, et al.
Filename : draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-04.txt
Pages : 116
Date : 2007-1-18
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely used to synchronize
computer clocks in the Internet. This memorandum describes Version 4
of the NTP (NTPv4), introducing several changes from Version 3 of NTP
(NTPv3) described in RFC 1305, including the introduction of a
modified protocol header to accomodate Internet Protocol Version 6.
NTPv4 also includes optional extensions to the NTPv3
protocol,including a dynamic server discovery mechanism.
A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-04.txt
Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP.
Login with the username "anonymous" and a password of your e-mail address.
After logging in, type "cd internet-drafts" and then "get draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto-04.txt".