Re: [Ntp] I-D Action: draft-ietf-ntp-using-nts-for-ntp-27.txt

[Hal Murray <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] said:
> They should not fail with a working server, why would they? And if they do,
> they will very quickly get to long retry intervals, and there is likely
> something broken with the server anyway. 

I think you are underestimating the ability of complicated systems to screw up 
in ways that are not anticipated and/or for people to write and read 
complicated specs.

Consider Miroslav's example of TCP working while UDP gets firewalled.  (My 
code would not be nice in that case, and I'm a nut-case about retrying too 
hard.  I'll have to think about how to fix that.)  When does the NTS-KE retry 
timer get reset?  How many independent retry timers do we need?  (Do we need 
another for DNS?)

I think this area is complicated enough that we shouldn't try to over engineer 
it.  What can we say that will be easy to understand and cover most of cases 
we can think of today?  Being overly conservative is OK with me.

Can we list nasty cases?  Can we push things like that to some other document 
that is easier/faster to update?

Do we want to add something like:
  This area lacks experience.  Code using NTS-KE MUST NOT be installed in 
places where it can't or won't be updated.

----------

I got mail saying
The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Network Time Security for the Network Time Protocol'
  (draft-ietf-ntp-using-nts-for-ntp-28.txt) as Proposed Standard

Is there any point in discussing things like this?

Do we get to see a version after the editor fixes the tbds and such yet before 
it is officially published?



-- 
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