AltME groups: search

NTP not an option?

NTP is on the roadmap for this server, but with low priority

OK, I'll keep that in mind when I look into NTP

I get failures on all the ntp servers I've tried so far.

daytime doesn't use the ntp protocol IIRC

I liked this one from Dave Mills NTP RFC1305...
There will exist an 200-picosecond interval,

henceforth ignored, every 136 years when the 64-bit field will be 
zero
and thus considered invalid.

We decided to use %s for REBOL precision...no epoch seconds in form-date. 
 And yeah, I was looking at the TIME and NTP protocols...it would 
not be fun in high level REBOL, I don't think even Rebcode could 
poke the right fields for time!

We'll have to see how serious the problem is, and if we can correct 
it by using NTP on the Syllable guest

now where is the ntp protocol ?

Debian I just executed  apt-get install ntp  and then forgot about 
it.

Does it fetch time through NTP or just from the system clock?

Usually just the hardare clock. NTP must be configured later

An idea of NTP scheme, but servers comunicates only on 123 UDP port. 
overview of time services:

Daytime:  Ascii response,  Graham and Ladislav has written a scheme/tool 
already  port 13

Time: most simple possible server listening on port  37 answer 32bit 
unsigned number of second from 1-1-1900/0:00 (calculation of human 
readable date is not so trivial because of leaping seconds inserted 
to UTC with no rule at all, an Earth is dancing a Jive in fact)

HTTP: use inserted Date-time from any header returned from server 
port 80

SNTP: more precise protocol (contains also fraction of second in 
reply) subprotocol of NTP on UDP port 37

NTP: most precise available to compare more time servers, and calculate 
with computed transport delay and phase shift from evaluated couple 
of handshaking packets.  UDP port 37

The latter two use minimally 12  32bit binary packets for request 
and response, symmetric or asymetric cryptography possible (honestly 
I've no clue why this).

I've got a reply from NTP server via SNTP packet (RFC 2030) almost 
all nulls in client packet (in Rebol 2 UDP port, because it is not 
clear how to do it in R3)

BTW Steeve there is UDP definitions in header files of Host kit, 
so I think UDP should be possible somehow, but TCP scheme is hard 
coded (ie not available to play with other variants)

There are a few different time protocols, and the standard time servers 
don't tend to run the daytime protocol. They usually run NTP.

2 amacleod: time protocol is not very accurate, the same levely of 
accuracy you can get by reading any HTML size and distile the time 
from HTML header. OTOH NTP protocol is able to get milisecond accuracy 
but by quite difficult handshake and as far as I know not yet written 
for rebol