Subject: [Ntp] Overview of Roughtime

From: Watson Ladd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 10:29:42 -0800

Dear all,

Roughtime an invention of AGL's discussed at
https://www.imperialviolet.org/2016/09/19/roughtime.html and also
implemented and announced as a public service at
https://blog.cloudflare.com/roughtime/.

Roughtime operates very similarly to NTP: a client sends a packet, the
server responds with echoing some fields from the packet, a timestamp
and a signature.
Roughtime's improvements over NTS relate to being able to detect
false-ticking servers. Roughtime servers sign their responses to
clients, and as a result Roughtime servers that false-tick can have
irrevocable proof presented that their responses are inconsistent with
other servers.
Clients can have a list of trusted servers periodically updated
through usual software update mechanisms ala CT. This attacks the
chicken and egg problem that has bedeviled efforts to secure time.

Roughtime uses smeared UTC and currently only supports Ed25519
signatures. Both of these might be problems. TAI could also work and
avoids the parochialism of smeared UTC. Currently there are several
servers running, but not networks of clients to fight cheaters and I
don't believe clients are using this for synchronization yet.

If there is interest I may attempt to start writing a draft.

Sincerely,
Watson Ladd

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From: Daniel Franke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:52:26 -0500

I would like to see this go forward with the IETF in some capacity
(and would like to participate if time allows), but I think it falls
outside the charter of this working group. If more people are
interested maybe we could aim for a BoF session in Prague?

On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 1:30 PM Watson Ladd
<watson=[email-masked]> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> ntp mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ntp

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From: Kyle Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:56:37 -0500

I am interested in this, but it might be worthwhile to expand the charter
of NTP rather than create another separate network time WG right after
retiring TICTOC.

Kyle

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From: Job Snijders <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 20:03:45 +0100

> of NTP rather than create another separate network time WG right after

Agreed.

Kind regards,

Job