NTP versions in production use?

John Kristoff jtk at cymru.com
Mon Jul 13 13:01:17 UTC 2015


Hi Harlan,

On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:30:15 -0700
Harlan Stenn <stenn at nwtime.org> wrote:

> > I know that Cisco, for example, uses NTP in around 10 different
> > product lines, but I don't know what versions of NTP are in current
> > use.

At least with the equipment with which I'm familiar they weren't using
the reference implementation and as such, they didn't implement all the
bells and whistles.  So monlist and all the mode 6/7 stuff for instance
isn't something you get with typical cisco gear, nor any ntp specific
version number. Their implementation may be "older" in that sense, but
perhaps safer, because it is "simpler" too.  I had once heard the ntp
code in ios was based on ntpd v3 (the code and protocol) and was
relatively robust, done by a very capable coder.  An authoritative
voice on what the current state is would be helpful of course.

Nonetheless, there are lots of cisco devices with ntp on them.
Presumably most of them are using roughly the same code.

> > I'm also curious about the answers here for Juniper and other
> > network gear providers.  That would include routers, switches, and
> > other types of gear.

JUNOS roughly follows FreeBSD and the reference implementation, but
they have lagged behind a bit of what is generally available of
course.  You can easily find ntp running on JUNOS5 if that is any
indication of what is in the wild.

Jared probably has as good as any source of this data, but we have some
too that might go back a little further.  If you need anything more
specific than the above, let me know.

John



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