Feature request: NTPv5

[mdavids]

Has support for NTPv5 already been considered, or is it too soon? 🤔

[beevik]

It's not yet an RFC, so I think it's still too soon for this package. It's also a pretty significant change to NTPv4. It introduces a new on-the-wire message format and a number of extensions, many of which will need to be handled by the client.

Given that IETF drafts can change significantly (or die without approval) before they become RFCs, I will probably wait.

[beevik]

(I should add that it seems highly unlikely that this particular draft effort will die without approval.)

[mdavids]

Understood - I just wanted to bring it up, because deployments are starting to appear in the wild:

https://trifectatech.org/blog/ntpd-rs-now-supports-version-5-of-the-network-time-protocol/

Also; https://github.com/mlichvar/chrony-ntp5

Both incompatible with each other btw, because of different content in the 'Draft Identification Extension Field'.

[beevik]

I've started work on NTPv5 compatibility in the following branch: https://github.com/beevik/ntp/tree/ntp5

It currently supports all NTPv5 extension fields as defined by draft #7.

[mdavids]

I briefly tested it with Chrony-ntpv5 and that seems to work! With ntpd-rs not so much. Perhaps because it is still at draft #6 ?

[beevik]

I got it working with ntpd-rs, but they're using an older draft version, so my code is not compatible with it. If you need to test it out, you can try lowering the draft version number in my code. I believe drafts 6 and 7 are mostly compatible.

[mdavids]

Thanks - meanwhile I also did this: pendulum-project/ntpd-rs#2092