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== History of NTP
// Early history was found at https://www.galsys.co.uk/about-NTP.html
The first NTP implementation started around 1980 with an accuracy of
only several hundred milliseconds. That very first implementation was
documented in Internet Engineering Note
https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien173.txt[IEN-173]. Later the first
specification appeared in
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc778.txt[RFC 778], but it was still
named Internet Clock Service. At that time clock synchronization was
needed for the HELLO routing protocol. NTP was introduced in
https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc958.txt[RFC 958] for the first time,
mainly describing the packets seen on the network as well as some
basic calculations involved. Early versions of NTP did not compensate
any frequency error.
The first complete specification of the protocol and accompanying
algorithms for NTP version 1 appeared 1988 in
https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1059.txt[RFC 1059]. That version already
had symmetric operation mode as well as client-server mode.
Version 2 introducing symmetric-key authentication (using DES-CBC) was
described in https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1119.txt[RFC 1119] only
about one year later. About the same time another time synchronization
protocol named Digital Time Synchronization Service (DTSS) was
presented by Digital Equipment Corporation. At that time the software
named xntp was written by Dennis Fergusson at the University of
Toronto. That software evolved to the software distribution that is
publicly available now.
Combining the good ideas of DTSS with those of NTP produced a new
specification for NTP version 3, namely
https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1992.txt[RFC 1305], in 1992. That
version introduced formal correctness principles and revised
algorithms. Furthermore broadcast mode was added to the protocol.
While NTP per se only deals with adjusting the operating system's
clock, there was some parallel research on improving time keeping
within the operating system's
kernel. https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1589.txt[RFC 1589] (A kernel
model for precision timekeeping) described a new implementation and
interface in 1994. That implementation could keep time with a
precision of up to one microsecond.
Work for a Version 4 of NTP began around 1994. The first new
specification was https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2030.txt[RFC 2030],
Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) version 4 for IPv4, IPv6 and OSI.
This issued in 1996.
An operating system interface for accurate 1-per-second pulses pulses
for calibrating and stabilizing the system clock was designed and
documented in https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2783.txt[RFC 2783]
(Pulse-per-second API for Unix-like operating systems, version 1),
finally published in 1999. This is now implemented in all modern
Unixes.
A proposed specification for NTPv4 issued in 2010 as
https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5905.txt[RFC 5905]. Despite some
underspecification and technical difficulties (especially near
Autokey, its attempt at public-key encryption for authentication)
NTPv4 implementations were in general use by 2014.
The extension mechanism for the protocol was partly specified in RFC
5905, but nor fully defined until
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7822[RFC 7822] in 2016.
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