Note that this service is provided as an experimental service, as a part of an research project, and should therefore not be used for production purposes. Use of said service is subject to the following terms and conditions. Access and use of this service is provided "as is" and at the user's risk. Your access and continued use of said services constitute acceptance of a compliance with the following provisions. Users who do not agree should immediately discontinue any use of the services.
THE PROVIDER OF THIS SERVICE DOES NOT GUARANTEE THE QUALITY,
ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OF THE SERVICES, OR THAT THE RESULTS
WILL BE ERROR-FREE OR THAT SAID SERVICE WILL OPERATE WITHOUT
INTERRUPTION. GIVEN THE FACT THAT THIS SERVICE IS PROVIDED
AS AN EXPERIMENTAL SERVICE, THE PROVIDER HEREBY EXCLUDES
ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AND SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES WHATSOEVER AND HOWEVER CAUSED, ARISING OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE USE OF THE SERVICE, INCLUDING ANY LOSS OF USE, LOST
DATA, LOST BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION OR ANY
OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS, WHETHER IN CONTRACT OR TORT.
How to use the experimental
IPv6 NTP primary (stratum 1) server
Network Time protocol over IPv6 (NTP)
Table of content
The main goal of this milestone is to provide a Network Time Protocol
(NTP) compliant server to the IPv6 community. The Network Time Protocol
is a protocol designed for clock synchronization between computers over
a network. Usually, a NTP client queries a NTP server and will adjust
its system clock on the server's reply. The protocol describes how to
accuratly adjust the client's time and will take into account the various
delays (round trip delay, for example). NTP servers are hooked to devices
(Atomic clock, GPS...) that give the exact time. When we started the project
no implementation was known to provide NTP services on IPv6.
2.
Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP)
This was our first shot at providing network time synchronization to IPv6 hosts. This protocol was chosen for its simplicity. SNTP is very much like NTP, but less complex. We have made a SNTP implementation which is "protocol independant" (it can use both IPv4 and IPv6). This implementation uses the Trimble Palissade GPS driver provided in the NTP distribution of David L. Mills. After coding this implementation we went after the real NTP.
A SNTP package with both the client and the server is available. To try
it, download this file sntp-ipv6-1.0.tar.gz
and follow these instructions:
- unpack the archive
tar zxf sntp-ipv6-1.0.tgz
- change to the newly created directory
cd sntp6
- read the README file and LEGAL file
more README
more LEGAL - build the package
make all
- read the man pages on how to use the programs
more sntpdate.txt
more sntpd.txt
Viagénie does not provide a public IPv6 SNTP service because it has ported a NTP server and client to IPv6: it is offering this service instead. See next section for more details.
3. Network
Time Protocol (NTP)
We ported the NTP implementation of David L. Mills. Porting this implementation
to IPv6 was not trivial. Usage of IPv4 address structures were scattered
accross the source code. We had to modify common libraries, daemon and
client source code. We ported 2 of the programs provided in that implementation:
ntpd (the server) and ntpdate (the client). The modifications made do
not interfer with the IPv4 capabilities of the package. Our IPv6 NTP server
is a primary (stratum 1) public server hooked to a Trimble Palissage GPS.
This server only respond to IPv6 NTP queries. Our set-up looks like this
:
The NTP version ported is 4.1.0 wich is the latest release. The new version is not an official branch of David L. Mills package but an experimental project. We hope our work will be part of David's new release in the future.
The patch has been tested only with FreeBSD 4.3 RELEASE and Solaris 8 operating systems.
To try the IPv6 version of David L. Mills NTP package, follow these instructions :
- Download David's original package : ntp-4.1.0.tar.gz (HTTP
or FTP)
and patch file ntp-4.1.0-ipv6.patch.tar.gz
- Unpack the archive
tar zxf ntp-4.1.0.tar.gz
- Change to the newly created directory
cd ntp-4.1.0
- Unpack the patch
tar zxf ntp-4.1.0-ipv6.patch.tar.gz
- Apply the patch
patch -p0 < ntp-4.1.0-ipv6.patch
- Follow NTP's package instructions in INSTALLv6.txt provided with the
patch
more INSTALLv6.TXT
- Try the new ntpdate on our IPv6 NTP server at ntp.ipv6.viagenie.qc.ca
ntpdate/ntpdate -q ntp.ipv6.viagenie.qc.ca