5.1. NTP Access Policy

It was proposed on news://comp.protocols.time.ntp to publish the access policy for ntp via ntp/tcp. Since ntp (the time protocol) only uses ntp/udp, ntp/tcp is available as a reserved port number for ntp.

It would be possible to publish both a machine readable version (in some standard format, to be determined) and a human readable version.

A simple solution is to use inetd to offer a file on connection to ntp/tcp. Example line in inetd.conf:

ntp  stream  tcp     nowait  nobody  /usr/libexec/tcpd       /bin/cat /etc/ntp-access-policy.txt

The file /etc/ntp-access-policy.txt would then contain the access policy.

-- KoosVanDenHout - 28 Aug 2003