[ntp:questions] NTP over redundant peer links, undetected loops

Dave Hart davehart at gmail.com
Sun Feb 15 19:13:21 UTC 2009


On Feb 15, 6:23 pm, ma... at ntp.org (Danny Mayer) wrote:
> Dave Hart wrote:
> > Why play roulette if you have a globally unique IPv4 address to use as
> > a refid?  Since IPv6 addresses are hashed down to 32 bits if used as a
> > refid, again, IPv4 global addresses if available are better unique
> > identifiers.
>
> Because I want to get away from the notion that these are meant to be IP
> addresses.

Well, hash it.  As long as your hash is good, it the result should be
as unique as the non-rfc1918, non-multicast, non-loopback IPv4
address.  It breaks ntptrace and yes I know ntptrace is broken for
IPv6 as well.  Looking at the loop detection functionality, a hashed
unique IPv4 address is good as is the unmangled address.  Since
there's a small installed base using IPv4 addresses now (and hashed
IPv6), it might not be a good idea to change horses midstream.

> In addition in an IPv6-only environment that wouldn't work
> either.

I have no idea why preferring any non-RFC1918 IPv4 address over any
RFC1918 IPv4 address when selecting a refid would have any impact
whatsoever in an IPv6-only environment, where today and presumably
tomorrow your 32-bit refid would derive from one of your more unique
IPv6 addresses.

> Why create work when it's unnecessary just to find a valid IP
> address?

Maybe it's not worth doing anything special about widely-shared
private IPv4 addresses.  If loop detection is all that matters, who
cares about a few false positives?  Nowhere near as harmful as false
negatives.

> In addition with anycast addresses are not globally unique.

Anycast is worse than useless for NTP.  Non-issue.

> The
> chances that you will create a non-unique random number within a network
> is extremely low.

nodes in network times one in two billion, or one in four billion,
assuming a perfect PRNG.  But why gamble?  Global IPv4 addresses work
today and are more than unique enough.  Same with IPv6 addresses using
a consistent hash.  RFC1918 addresses, as I said, at worst lead to
false positive loop detection and therefore reduce the server choice
for the victim, not exactly the kind of thing that causes riots either
way.

Cheers,
Dave Hart




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