[ntp:questions] Can or should the NTP protocol eventually serve timezone data?

Rob nomail at example.com
Fri Jun 19 19:21:38 UTC 2009


Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Rod Dorman wrote:
>> In article <qu-dnfrtdPK6Z6fXnZ2dnUVZ_hydnZ2d at giganews.com>,
>> Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>  ...
>>> Kludging local timezone conversions into the NTP protocol somehow would 
>>> be a nightmare if you could persuade anyone to do it!  24 or more 
>>> timezones  ...
>> 
>> Don't forget that there are places like Newfoundland that don't have a
>> nice round number of hours offset.
>> 
>
> That's one of the possibilities that led me to say "24 or more".  I 
> don't believe that it's the only one!

It is not relevant.  The offset from UTC is not the kind of timezone
information that is being discussed here.  It cannot be distributed
via NTP anyway, as the server does not know where the client is and
thus cannot give it the offset info.

The interesting information is the DST schedule in use at the different
areas.  Those are not the same for different areas at the same UTC
offset.  The client will have to know in which area it is and then
can request the timezone information for that area, which tells it
what the offset is at that specific moment.

My recent Linux system has 858 different zone specification files.
More than 24, indeed.




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