Welcome to Network Time Foundation’s first community newsletter! Here, we keep you updated on some of the latest developments across all of our projects, including Network Time Protocol (NTP), Network Time Security (NTS), LinuxPTP, libptpmgmt, Khronos, and SyncE. Explore the vital role of precise time synchronization in the finance, telecommunications, healthcare, cybersecurity, and other important industries.
Stay tuned for exciting updates and in-depth insights in each edition of our newsletter!
Project Updates
2022 ARIN Community Grant: Refactoring ntpd’s Extension Field Handling
NTF is pleased to announce the very successful completion of its first ARIN Community Grant, which enabled the NTP Project to finish refactoring ntpd’s Extension Field handling in order for ntpd to support both legacy and current users. Harlan’s detailed summary of this effort is available.
This funded effort will provide the NTP Project’s Reference Implementation with a basic TCP-based framework service that acts as a broker between its ntpd daemon and any subscribed NTP servers and clients, including external monitoring and management agents. Once this basic framework is in place, the NTP Project will extend the broker to add more capabilities and provide a veritable plethora of new features.
The NTP TCP Services Daemon will provide better time synchronization reliability, management, monitoring, security, and DDoS mitigation capabilities.
More information about this award is available here.
Separate ARIN Community Grants are limited to two consecutive years, and NTF is very pleased that, before we even officially delivered on our 2022 ARIN Community Grant, ARIN awarded NTF a second grant, for a different project, in 2023.
Network Time Security (NTS)
Exciting news! EndRun Technologies is the first organization to pledge ongoing monthly support for Network Time Foundation’s completion of the NTP Project’s NTS feature for its Reference Implementation. Their contributions bolster our mission for precise time synchronization.
If your organization is waiting for our NTS implementation, please contact us to find out how you can help us complete this work even faster!
Meet Two of Our Newest Projects: Khronos and libptpmgmt
Building on our commitment and mission to support open source network time-related projects, we are pleased to announce the official launch of NTF Project websites and git repos for Khronos and libptpmgmt.
Khronos Project: Level up NTP (and soon LinuxPTP) with provable security, no fuss for servers, and minimal overhead – a future-proof timekeeping game-changer!
libptpmgmt: A powerful library for LinuxPTP communication, supporting IEEE 1588-2019 management messages, with native scripting and open-source goodness!
Coming Soon: SyncE Projects
NTF’s SyncE Projects are part of an ecosystem where organizations and individuals work together on a variety of open source SyncE tools. This collaboration provides great value to those who, for example, are looking at O-RAN solutions. NTF’s SyncE projects come from our partnerships with SyncMonk, Renesas, and Intel. We’ll have more information about these projects in our next newsletter.
LinuxPTP Announces Quarterly Release Schedule
LinuxPTP is now on quarterly releases! Learn more about LinuxPTP’s 4.1 release on 5 September 2023.
LinuxPTP 4.2 is scheduled to be released on 5 December 2023.
Upcoming Events
NANOG 89
We’re excited to tell you that Harlan will be making a presentation at NANOG 89, held in San Diego, CA from 16-18 October: “Network Time Foundation Status Update: The NTP, LinuxPTP, libptpmgmt, Khronos, and SyncE Projects”.
Join us for insightful discussions on network time-related technologies! We’ll also see about setting up a BOF session for spontaneous discussions and Q&A.
He’d love to meet up with folks! If you’re interested in scheduling a meeting with him, please let us know.
Giving Tuesday
Join the spirit of radical generosity this Giving Tuesday, 28 November!
Your employer might already have a donation matching program. You can search for your employer at Charity Navigator.
If your company or organization would like to match donations to Network Time Foundation, don’t hesitate to reach out – let’s team up to make a meaningful impact!
Funding Reduction Impacts
Have you ever wondered what happens when an open-source organization that provides a valuable and critical service experiences financial challenges? What is the impact when funding that has been driving the ongoing development and maintenance of critical infrastructure technology suddenly dries up?
Initially, there might not be any noticeable effects. After all, infrastructure technology is generally well built and maintained over years, if not decades. However, over time, as new security threats are identified, new bugs are discovered, and new features are needed, it will become painfully obvious that something is wrong when there isn’t a team of people dedicated to the effort long-term.
Seeds of deeper, unobvious problems are planted too. As the “solution space” fractures, limited-scope fixes and lightweight solutions are deployed. While these efforts may be sufficient for short periods of time or for limited use cases, can anyone reasonably believe that these will fully replace an encompassing, well-engineered, and deeply understood effort from a group that has invested decades in its products? Put some other ways, would you want to use a car that was put together from components scrounged from numerous, independent, unrelated parties, or would you want to use a car built by an organization that has decades of experience designing, building, and fixing cars? If you have the option to do a proper job of heating everybody’s home in a way that works well, is efficient, and avoids pollution, what happens when folks start installing personal-use coal or wood burning stoves?
Network Time Foundation, the home of the NTP Project, LinuxPTP, Khronos, and several other network-time-related efforts, is experiencing financial shortfalls that are restricting our ability to respond to your needs, and the needs of the community. We have a responsibility to transparently communicate this to you and we invite you to be part of the solution.
Please think hard about the real impact of funding reduction on critical open-source services. As infrastructure weakens over time, security risks grow and patchwork fixes emerge. Why settle for fragmented solutions when you can support a team of well-seasoned experts to provide a well-designed solution that almost certainly avoids problems that most people have not even considered?
Your support ensures we continue to provide robust, reliable solutions for all. Thank you for standing with us in these challenging times!