On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Rob<nom...@example.com> wrote: > Now you are just iterating the reasons why it would be useful to > distribute this info via some network. The question being asked is > if it could be useful to use an NTP server to distribute it. An > alternative could be do use some HTTP server, a new dedicated protcol, > or whatever method you could think of.
There's already a widely-known FTP site (ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub) for the timezone data. So really, there's already a standard distribution protocol. (I suppose you could say "Windows Update" is an equivalent, competing protocol). The real problem is that all endpoint operating systems and in some cases applications need to use the same timezone data schema and names, and update their zone info automatically. In reality, the UNIX world for the most part uses zoneinfo format, Windows another format, and a huge number of applications solve the problem in their own way (ignoring the OS facilities). Again, I suggest this is not a problem NTP (or even a new dedicated protocol) can really solve. For example, a huge number of applications - and even whole platforms - still don't understand Unicode character sets 18 years after standardization. -- RPM _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
