Subject: WG Review: Network Time Protocol (ntp)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 14:14:11 -0500

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Internet Area.  
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. The following description 
was submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send 
your comments to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by February 16th.

+++

Network Time Protocol (ntp)
==========================

Current Status: Proposed Working Group

Description of Working Group: 

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 (NTP version 3) was 
published in March 1992 and remains unchanged and at Draft 
Standard status. RFC 1305 represents the majority of full NTP 
implementations deployed today. RFC 2030 (SNTP version 4) 
was published as an Informational RFC in October 1996 as a 
lightweight version of NTP for deployments not requiring the full 
functionality of NTP. SNTP now represents the majority of both 
NTP traffic and NTP implementation issues on the Internet. A 
good deal of work has been produced in the NTP community 
updating both NTPv3 and SNTPv4. This work is ongoing and 
available through the collaborative development effort in the NTP 
community, but it has not been reflected back into the NTP 
specifications. 

The goal of this working group is to document NTPv4 based on 
the extensive work of the NTP community and to advance the 
standardization status of NTP. It is an explicit goal of this 
effort to have NTPv4 interoperate with the deployed base avoiding 
any backwards-incompatible changes. 

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 focus first on delivering NTPv4 and will defer additional
development efforts until after the delivery of NTPv4.  Support for
IPv6 and defining mechanisms for securing NTP transactions is
considered part of the core NTPv4 functionality.  Potentials further
modifications and additions to the NTP protocol will be documented for
possible further work beyond the initial NTPv4 effort.

The working group will initially focus on the following 
deliverables:  
1.  NTPv4 Scope and Requirements Document (documenting the 
scope of the NTPv4 update and identifying issues deferred for 
future work).
2.  NTPv4 Protocol Specification (documenting the protocol 
on the wire)
3.  NTPv4 Architecture and Algorithms Specification 
(documenting the architecture, mathematical algorithms, 
and behavior of NTP servers and clients)  
4.  NTPv4 MIB (provision for management and monitoring 
of NTP via SNMP) 

_______________________________________________
IETF-Announce mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce