Subject: Document Action: 'Network Time Protocol Version 4 Autokey Specification' to Informational RFC

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:45:07 -0700 (PDT)

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'Network Time Protocol Version 4 Autokey Specification '
   <draft-ietf-ntp-autokey-08.txt> as an Informational RFC

This document is the product of the Network Time Protocol Working Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Ralph Droms and Jari Arkko.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ntp-autokey-08.txt

Technical Summary

  This document describes the Autokey security model for
  authenticating servers to clients using the Network Time Protocol
  (NTP) and public key cryptography. Its design is based on the
  premise that IPSEC schemes cannot be adopted intact, since that
  would preclude stateless servers and severely compromise timekeeping
  accuracy. In addition, PKI schemes presume authenticated time values
  are always available to enforce certificate lifetimes; however,
  cryptographically verified timestamps require interaction between
  the timekeeping and authentication functions.

  This document includes the Autokey requirements analysis, design
  principles and protocol specification. A detailed description of the
  protocol states, events and transition functions is included. A
  prototype of the Autokey design based on this memo has been
  implemented, tested and documented in the NTP Version 4 (NTPv4)
  software distribution for Unix, Windows and VMS at
  http://www.ntp.org.

Working Group Summary

  The NTP working group has done extensive reviews of this document,
  and it reflects the consensus of the working group.

Document Quality

  This document has been reviewed by several members of the
  [email-masked] mailing list and by the NTP WG chairs.

Personnel

  Karen O'Donoghue is the responsible document shepherd.
  Ralph Droms is the responsible Area Director.