Network Time Protocol specification and implementation
RFC 1059, “Network Time Protocol specification and implementation”, is an Unknown document published in July 1988 by D.L. Mills. It obsoletes RFC 958. It has been obsoleted by RFC 1119, RFC 1305 — refer to the newer document for the authoritative version. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This memo describes the Network Time Protocol (NTP), specifies its formal structure and summarizes information useful for its implementation. NTP provides the mechanisms to synchronize time and coordinate time distribution in a large, diverse internet operating at rates from mundane to lightwave. It uses a returnable-time design in which a distributed subnet of time servers operating in a self- organizing, hierarchical master-slave configuration synchronizes logical clocks within the subnet and to national time standards via wire or radio. The servers can also redistribute reference time via local routing algorithms and time daemons. The NTP architectures, algorithms and protocols which have evolved over several years of implementation and refinement are described in this document. The prototype system, which has been in regular operation in the Internet for the last two years, is described in an Appendix along with performance data which shows that timekeeping accuracy throughout most portions of the Internet can be ordinarily maintained to within a few tens of milliseconds, even the cases of failure or disruption of clocks, time servers or nets. This is a Draft Standard for an Elective protocol.
What “Unknown” means
The standards-track status of this early RFC was never formally classified.
The canonical text of RFC 1059 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
- RFC 1058 Routing Information Protocol
- RFC 1057 RPC: Remote Procedure Call Protocol specification: Version 2
- RFC 1056 PCMAIL: A distributed mail system for personal computers
- RFC 1062 Internet numbers
- RFC 1055 Nonstandard for transmission of IP datagrams over serial lines: SLIP
- RFC 1063 IP MTU discovery options
- RFC 1054 Host extensions for IP multicasting
- RFC 1064 Interactive Mail Access Protocol: Version 2