Re: [TLS] No more GMT exposure in the handshake

[Kurt Roeckx <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Jun 08, 2014 at 03:39:36PM +0000, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
> > In any case, having 64bits of timing information from a server would
> > allow for a parasitic network time protocol that is as accurate as NTP
> > to be built on top of TLS. I haven't checked but I believe Google
> > still uses this to set clocks on ChromeOS.
> 
> "As accurate as NTP" is a bold claim.  NTP "accuracy" (as opposed
> to precision which is a different beast entirely) comes from using
> multiple sourcs a PLL to estimate round-trip delay and smooth out
> noise, and when possible multiple sources, ...
> 
> NTP runs over UDP which is less likely to be delayed, re-transmitted, ...
> 
> Attaining NTP "accuracy" over TLS, seems rather implausible.

I think even getting it's precision will be hard.

But I wonder what kind of accuracy do you really want?  I think
getting an accuracy smaller than 1 second shouldn't be that hard,
but ntpd is only claiming an accuracy in the order of 0.1 seconds
in most cases and if you're lucky you get an estimated one in the
order of 1 ms.  But do most people care about 1 second?  Or even
10 seconds?  And if you do care about the accuracy, why don't you
run ntp?


Kurt