[ntp:hackers] Simplifying NTPD

Danny Mayer mayer at pdmconsulting.net
Mon Jun 30 13:45:13 UTC 2014


On 6/27/2014 10:50 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
>   My proposal is to "evict" them to separate processes, so they don't
>   have to touch the rest of ntpd in any other way, than through a
>   simple well defined ASCII/text based protocol.
> 
> I think it would be good to write up the protocol and design first, as
> there are a few subtleties.
> 
> I am guessing that the protocol will be spoken over a unix-domain
> socket, usually, or perhaps TCP for systems where that doesn't work.
> So that seems to drive the design to report an offset from the system
> clock observed at some system clock value.

TCP and unix domain sockets are out of the question. TCP requires a lot
of overhead and handshakes and unix domain sockets don't exist on
Windows making porting much harder. Just use standard UDP sockets and
the data can then be handled the same way as from remote servers.
Otherwise they will need special handling.

Danny




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