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Date:      Sat, 30 Apr 2016 13:43:34 +0000 (UTC)
From:      Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
To:        freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-16:16.ntp
Message-ID:  <slrnni9dk6.27hm.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>
References:  <20160429082953.DB31D1769@freefall.freebsd.org> <9e6342a420259fec7bd21d6222cc6e05@zahemszky.hu> <1461929003.67736.2.camel@yandex.com> <CINIP100NTSBSRqf69a0000002a@cinip100ntsbs.irtnog.net> <BABF8C57A778F04791343E5601659908237051@cinip100ntsbs.irtnog.net>

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On 2016-04-29, "Matthew X. Economou" <xenophon@irtnog.org> wrote:

>> What are the reasons FreeBSD has not deprecated ntpd in favor of
>> openntpd?
>
> While I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, the two simply aren't
> equivalent.

OpenNTPD is intended to cover the most common usage scenarios.

The single most common use of NTP is a client that simply gets the
time from a server or set of servers.  The second most common use
is a server that fetches the time from other servers and redistributes
it to a bunch of clients.   These two scenarios cover what, 99% of
all ntpd users?

(OpenNTPD also has support for reference clocks, but that code uses
OpenBSD's sensor framework and is not portable.)

> As a conscious design choice, OpenNTPD trades off accuracy
> for code simplicity.

There has been no such design choice.  OpenNTPD is simply accurate
enough in practice that the matter hasn't really come up.

Accuracy is a complete red herring if you are getting your time
from the Internet, where packet jitter is a few milliseconds anyway.

> It lacks support for NTP authentication, access controls,
> reference clocks, multicast/broadcast operation, or any kind of
> monitoring/reporting.

Only a tiny fraction of NTP users will use any of that.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de



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