Re: [Ntp] Antw: Re: Antw: [EXT] NTPv5 Loop Detection without Stratum

[Danny Mayer <[e-mail]>]

On 9/5/22 5:52 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
> [e-mail] said:
>> SNTP is defined in RFC5905 Section 14. You don't need anything more than
>> that.
> There is also RFC 4330 and a lot of crappy code out there in firmware that
> will never get updated.
RFC5905 obsoleted RFC4330.
> RFC 5905 is over 100 pages.  Section 14 is less than a page.  How many of
> those other pages would somebody have to read and understand in order to
> implement a SNTP client?
Read Section 14 to find out.
> If you were a junior programmer assigned to implement a SNTP client, would you
> go throgh RFC 5905 or google around and find some code to copy and ship it
> when it worked?
You don't give this to a junior programmer. RFC's are difficult enough 
to understand and if you were to do so, you would expect a poor 
implementation and incorrect code. Don't blame the programmer, blame the 
person who thought that was a good, or maybe a cheap, idea.
>
> I think we should have a separate document for SNTP clients.  So far, I
> haven't convinced (m)any other people.  There are two goals:
>
> One is to have a clear and simple document so we can point people at it when
> their current code is sending ancient format packets.  Some of those ancient
> packets are not using a format described in any RFC and they worked just
> because of the undocumented details in the ntpd implementation.
>
> Another is to make us think and document a packet format that we will support for a long time.
>
> We should setup servers that don't support old format packets so SNTP implementors can test their code.
>
Why bother? Developers of such clients will just use existing servers. 
You can have newer servers not support such packets. However you don't 
say what those undocumented details are.

Danny