[Ntp] NTS4UPTP Rev 03 - Formal request for WG adoption

[Marius Rohde <[e-mail]>]

Hello Daniel,

with some aspects of your argumentation, I do not agree.

Firstly, from a security point of view, every network that is not just 
accessible physically or logically by privileged persons, processes or 
computer systems should be considered insecure. And that is not just 
true for the Internet ;). To rely only on firewalls is a flaw in the 
design of the infrastructure. You should always implement as many lines 
of defense as feasible. Additionally, think of misconfigurations, 
insiders, or everything you have not been thinking about.
Do not get me wrong, I know that it is always a question of risk 
management how many time and resources an attacker has to invest to 
break the system. I think our part is not to decide which risk/security 
goals people should achieve but to give them well documented 
opportunities to get the security level they need.

IMHO NTS4NTP/PTP is currently not on the same level of security like 
NTS4UPTP because it does not provide the security to adequately ban the 
amplification monster PTP nor the guaranteed PTP precision in the 
borders of NTP. Even the mix of a unicast time protocol to “secure” the 
broadcast/multicast part of another time protocol seems quite ugly to me.

In addition, I am not convinced that NTS4NTP/PTP would make it easier to 
setup a PTP infrastructure than to use NTS directly built in the 
protocol from a user’s point of view.

I do not have a crystal ball and cannot say what will be tomorrow but to 
say - today people are not using it over the internet, so we need no 
additional security - is not a valid argument.

With kind regards
Marius Rohde

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