Why Join The NTP Forum?

NTP is an important part of today's world. Your membership in the NTP Forum benefits you, the NTP Community, and the world at-large.

The Importance Of NTP In Today's World

The NTP Project's software is the world's best way to keep the correct time on most computers, and is the foundation of accurate network time synchronization. As such, it is critical to many social and technical functions.

The NTP Forum will significantly improve NTP.

An improved NTP will make your life easier because it will:

• Streamline national and international regulatory compliance (US: HIPAA, SOX; EU: EuroSOX, SEPA/MIFID)
• Increase the accuracy of financial and other transactional records
• Enable more effective cooperation with criminal investigations
• Improve the customer service experience for customers and staff alike
• Reduce technical support hassles

Effective network time synchronization enables you to easily and accurately comply with regulatory mandates concerning who viewed confidential records, and when this happened. Removing network time discrepancies provides a clear, clean audit trail, thus avoiding unnecessary complications with regulatory agencies.

Financial services companies will further benefit from improved accuracy and integrity of transaction recording, and security, logging, and auditing of customer and business records.

Organizations will be able to provide more accurate (and therefore more dependable) information when cooperating with LEOs in the pursuit of criminals who have victimized their customers. (Examples: tracking phishers, crackers, spammers, scammers, botnet control centers, pump-and-dump operators, distributors of child pornography)

Technical support operations can more easily isolate, identify and correct issues customers are facing. This improves customer satisfaction and retention and reduces technical and customer support costs.

Why it is Important that You Join The NTP Forum

Membership revenue from the NTP Forum will support all areas of the NTP Project that require funding.

You need a vibrant NTP Product.

Here are the reasons this matters to you...

The core software is leading-edge research, not a product

The core NTP software is the ongoing result of decades of research and development of one individual, Prof. David L. Mills, PhD of the University of Delaware.

In its problem space it is the best ...

• researched, analyzed, and engineered
• behaving and performing

... software in the world.

Professor Mills devotes his time and effort to keeping the latest NTP code in peak condition. He does not patch older releases. He does not require additional support for his efforts.

His remarkable efforts are an exquisite example of an ongoing, fully implemented and operational research project.

Professor Mills and the University of Delaware are to be genuinely and sincerely commended for their contributions to the networking community.

However, these efforts and contributions support, but do not yield, a product.

To convert this brilliant intellectual output into a vibrant, well-maintained, robust and reliable product on which critical infrastructure, industries, and services can depend is currently the function of a 100% volunteer corps.

Given the market value of the skills needed to maintain this product, significant long- and near-term attrition of unpaid volunteers is inevitable.

Funding is required to compensate the people who maintain this product, from which so many others derive benefit, and provide incentive for others to join the effort in the future.

With the assistance of these highly skilled people, the NTP Forum will be in an ideal position to:

• foster collaborative leadership
• provide for the reliable continuity of the project
• deliver solutions to problems
• maintain, support and advance the software
• support the institutions and people who install and operate NTP
• improve the documentation
• offer testing and certification to companies that embed NTP in their products
• evolve NTP into a robust product

We need a new RFC (Standards document) for NTP

The NTP Standards Process

RFC1119 is the NTPV2 specification. Its status was STANDARD, and its state was RECOMMENDED. It is now obsolete.

RFC1305 is the NTPV3 specification. Its status is DRAFT, and its state is ELECTIVE.

An older list of the status of these RFCs can be found at http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1540

The latest list of the status of these documents can be found at http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3700 .

If you read RFC3700 you will see that the NTPV2 specification is gone, the NTPV3 specification is still a DRAFT (not a STANDARD), and there is a slot waiting for the NTPV4 specification.

Standards bodies need a fixed specification.

By its very nature, the work of Professor Mills is evolutionary. While the Standards Working Group is busy nailing down the working specification, Professor Mills is making improvements to that specification.

The work of Professor Mills is critical to the community, and his efforts are always pulling at the specifications the Working Group is busy trying to "cast into concrete".

Why we need a new Standard

We need an NTP standard, along with adequate maintenance on it to:

• allow for the adoption of NTP by industries and groups that require official, Standard specifications:
  • military
  • telcos
  • NGOs
• sanction innovation
• facilitate the long-term growth/evolution of NTP, its services and products

The problem is that currently NTP is controlled by a single indispensable person and we require fallback development capabilities to be resilient in the event that Prof. Mills becomes unavailable for whatever reason.

NTP needs to be more open and collaborative for the long-term health of the technology.

Sometimes a standard is needed for legal reasons, sometimes for cultural reasons, and sometimes for practical reasons.

What will happen if we don't get a new standard?

We risk going from a single, universal IETF Standard to multiple, non-interoperable, vendor-based protocols.

IEEE-1588

More folks will move to IEEE-1588 if we don't get a standard in the belief that 1588 will rapidly and effectively evolve into a suitable replacement for NTP. There are some difficulties with this perspective.

IEEE-1588 and NTP started off in different spaces. IEEE-1588 is growing, and is now approaching "NTP-space". TICTOC is a result of the problems of delivering an accepted NTP standard. As an aside, IEEE-1588 and TICTOC will probably be run by the telecommunications industry.

As IEEE-1588 approaches NTP-space its developers will be required to reinvent the wheel - always a risky proposition and especially so in this instance:

• wasted time and effort in rediscovering lessons painfully learned in the evolution and deployment of NTP
• risks of cutting corners and developmental shortcuts, with unexpected consequences

NTP has been around long enough that we know the hidden pitfalls and traps. We're aware of and address problems the developers of IEEE-1588 may not know exist.

NTP in Embedded Systems

The NTPV4 standard includes new protocol enhancements to address problematic embedded code in commercial products.

Without an NTPV4 standard these vital protocol enhancements will not be mandated, and these broken clients will propagate.

With an NTPV4 standard, some of the ambiguities will be removed, creating a more robust and reliable environment for developers, manufacturers, time servers, and users.

NTP is an Unfunded Mandate

The NTP Project has been, to date, a 100% volunteer effort. With the growing popularity of NTP it is no longer possible to provide the level of support and service with a small group of volunteers.

The NTP Forum is ideally positioned to collect money that will efficiently fund critical services that deliver NTP as a product that the community expects, deserves, and needs.

Join the NTP Forum and help us to help you!

What are the consequences of a continued all-volunteer effort

The standards process will stagnate and fail.

Porting full functionality to current high-importance/low-urgency platforms may not happen, as there is little chance that the needed resources and talent will be at the same place at the same time.

There will be no motivation for talented people to volunteer to take over on a long-term basis. We will lose experienced and talented folks to paying projects.

How Membership Benefits You

As a member of the NTP Forum you will be entitled to a range of benefits based on your level of support. Please see the current member benefits matrix for more information.

Voting members have effective input into any decisions put to the membership - we value your opinions and contributions!

How Your Membership Benefits The NTP Community

Your membership benefits the NTP Community by supporting the NTP Forum as it works to advance and evolve NTP. These efforts include:

• Underwriting of key public support services to the NTP (R&D) Project provided by the NTP Public Services Project

• Promotion of the standardization of NTP and its related specifications via the IETF NTP workgroup efforts

• Establishing Best Common Practices for using NTP in embedded systems

Members of the NTP Forum will be able to offer input on how the Forum can best serve the interests of the NTP Community.