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Welcome to the IETF

Time to update the Network Time Protocol

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a foundational Internet standard. Motivated by lessons learned, ongoing vulnerabilities, and emerging use cases, discussions are now under way to update it.

Read more about work on NTPv5.

Upcoming events

  • 115 London

    IETF 115 London 

    IETF 115 starts Saturday 5 November and runs through Friday afternoon, 11 November.

    London, UK
  • Yokohama

    IETF 116 Yokohama 

    IETF 116 starts Saturday 25 March and runs through Friday afternoon, 31 March.

    Yokohama, Japan
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What's new?

  • Time to update the Network Time Protocol 

    The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a foundational Internet standard that has provided clock synchronization between computer systems since the early 1980s. It was first standardized as RFC 958 in Sept 1984 with several revisions in the following years. Discussions have been ongoing in the NTP working group for a few years now about updating NTPv4 to NTPv5. This update is motivated by lessons learned, ongoing vulnerabilities, and emerging use cases.

    30 Sep 2022
  • Report from IAB workshop on Analyzing IETF Data (AID) 2021 published 

    The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published the official report from the workshop on Analyzing IETF Data (AID) 2021.

    28 Sep 2022
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The IETF Datatracker contains data about IETF documents, working groups, meetings, agendas, minutes, presentations, and more:


Understanding the Internet Engineering Task Force

Working Groups

Working Groups are the primary mechanism for development of IETF specifications and guidelines. Working Groups are typically created to address a specific problem or to produce one or more specific deliverables (a guideline, standards specification, etc.).

Featured Working Group

Network Time Protocol

Accurate, precise, and reliable time is an important function relied upon by modern systems, devices, and applications. This requires reliable and accurate network time synchronization over modern IP…

NTP [email protected]

Request for Comments (RFCs)

The IETF publishes RFCs authored by network operators, engineers, and computer scientists to document methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the Internet.

Featured RFC

Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms Specification

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely used to synchronize computer clocks in the Internet. This document describes NTP version 4 (NTPv4), which is backwards compatible with NTP version 3 (NTPv3)…

RFC 5905was: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ntp-ntpv4-proto/

Topics of interest

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Next IETF meeting

Stay tuned for the latest information on the next IETF meeting scheduled for 7-11 November 2022

Visit the IETF 115 meeting webpage