Subject: [Ntp] IETF 101 Comments about draft-ietf-ntp-packet-timestamps

From: Tal Mizrahi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2018 14:23:03 +0300

Hi,

We would like to address two main comments made at IETF 101.

Comment 1:
In the NTP session of IETF 101 Suresh asked about a comment Greg had in one
of the previous IETF meetings about timestamp-related work that is
currently in progress in the routing area or in the MPLS working group.

I went back to the recordings of the previous IETF meetings, and found a
comment Greg made in IETF 99 about adding timestamps to routing type data
models in the routing area.
In this context it is important to emphasize that there is a distinction
between text-based timestamps and packet timestamps. This distinction is
explained in detail in Section 1 of draft-ietf-ntp-packet-timestamps. RFC
3339 does a good job of defining text-based timestamps, and the scope of
the current draft is packet timestamps, which is the complementary part.
Data models use text-based timestamps, as defined in RFC 3339. Our draft
defines packet timestamps.
Therefore, I believe that timestamps in routing data models are less
related to the current draft.

Comment 2:
Yaakov observed that in NTP there is a time difference, and asked whether
it is in the scope of the current draft.
The scope of the current draft is packet timestamps, i.e., timestamps that
are included in the format of network protocol headers.
Technically, a time difference is not a timestamp. Moreover, time
differences in NTP are not part of the NTP packet format. Therefore, it is
not within the scope of the current draft.

Thanks for the comments, and please let us know if there are further
comments.

Cheers,
Tal.