[Ntp] Timescales

[Hal Murray <[e-mail]>]

Crazy idea dept...  But maybe...

Can we make the basic time transfer protocol use a simple/clean time scale, 
say TAI with nothing in the basic protocol about leap seconds?

The idea is to push the leap second stuff to a sub-protocol or whereever.  
Keep the main protocol clean.  Let the client handle leap seconds.

("sub-protocol" doesn't seem like a good term, but I can't think of a better 
one right now.)

If you had such a split, would you package the extras as extensions or a 
separate mode?

Is there anything that would go in such a sub-protocol that involves "now"?  
For example, you might want to implement leap-smearing by saying "the offset 
from TAI is now xxxx" but you don't need that.  The client can compute the 
offset.

Aside from leap-second stuff, what else would get packaged that way?

------

Given TAI, there are 2 pieces of information that a clients needs to handle 
UTC and its leap seconds.  The first is the current TAI-UTC offset.  The 
second is when the next leap second happens.  That data changes very 
infrequently and with plenty of warning.  There is no need to clutter up 
on-the-wire protocols with it.  A client could get it from a leap-seconds file 
distributed by their distro.


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.