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 (iesg@ietf.org) 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@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
