NTP For Mac Exec Summary

NTP for Macintosh Executive Overview Disclaimer The following information is believed to be accurate but is not guaranteed. It is provided solely to help you determine the applicability of the described software to your particular environment. This text has been excerpted primarily from Chapter 1 and Appendix B of the Network Time Protocol for Macintosh User’s Guide. Introduction NTP for Macintosh is a set of software components that synchronize the system clock of the Macintosh with other computers in a network. NTP for Macintosh is based upon the Internet standard Network Time Protocol as described in RFC 1119. This protocol is widely used within the TCP/IP community. It features high reliability, low overhead, and can provide accuracy to 232 picoseconds. The protocol distributes time in a tree topology using clients, servers, peers, and broadcast technology. NTP for Macintosh is implemented as a pair of Control Panel devices (containing a pair of corresponding system extensions and one device driver) for the Macintosh Operating System, and optional software for Apple’s A/UX and DEC’s VAX/VMS operating systems. NTP for Macintosh can use either AppleTalk (DDP) or IP (UDP), or both, as the transport protocol. These protocols are used for their extremely low overhead. The NTP upper level protocol is error resistant and is intended to work with datagram oriented transport protocols. It can work effectively even in very congested networks. The use of DDP/AppleTalk allows this software to work with any Macintosh using existing built-in networking capabilities. Therefore, no additional hardware or software is required. The UDP/IP capability is suitable for use in industry standard TCP/IP environments. This provides vendor independence and compatibility. To use this mode, the MacTCP software must be installed. Typical uses for this software include: • Synchronizing file and mail servers as well as user work stations. • Synchronizing distributed development environments using common file servers. Keeps each client Macintosh with the same idea of time so that software builds can be done conveniently. • Providing accurate time stamps for other applications such as journaling, time-based transaction processing, alarm and reminder management systems, and network file backup systems. c 1993 by John A. Dundas III –1– Revised December 16, 1994 Feature Summary Common features Both the NTP Client and NTP Server for the Macintosh Operating System support the following features. • Implements Version 2 of the Network Time Protocol; compatible with both Version 3 and Version 1 implementations • Works on any model Macintosh running System 6.0.5 or later software (it is System 7 friendly). Any Macintosh can be a client as well as a server. Works on the new Power Macintoshes in compatibility mode. • Compatible with AppleT…