I concur with the points made by Nurit and Ben.  In addition there is the 
asymmetric delay problems (for a given link) that lots of work has gone into to 
solve with 1588 - 1588 Transparent Clock / 1588 residency time compensation.  
To the best of my knowledge this is not being addressed for NTP.

Thus +1 for the default of IEEE1588.

Ed

From: "Sprecher, Nurit (NSN - IL/Hod HaSharon)" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 05:32:07 -0500
To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, 
"[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: "Zhao, Peng (NSN - CN/Shanghai)" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, "Pietilainen, Antti (NSN - 
FI/Espoo)" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, 
"[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [mpls] draft-ietf-mpls-loss-delay Timestamp

Stewart hi,
The accuracy targets as described below are approaching a level where on-path 
support is needed.
In this case the clear choice is IEEE 1588 because it specifies on-path support 
whereas NTP does not.
Even without on-path support IEEE 1588 could be better if better accuracy is 
pursued by sending multiple timing packets per second per slave/client, because 
standard NTP clients send messages at a very low rate for saving server 
resources.
I support the default of IEEE1588!
Best regards,
Nurit

From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of ext Stewart Bryant
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 6:07 PM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [mpls] draft-ietf-mpls-loss-delay Timestamp


We have received a LC comment on draft-ietf-mpls-loss-delay concerning the 
default timestamp.

In the first version of the draft we proposed NTP, but following initial 
comments from the MPLS-TP community we changed to IEEE1588. This requirement 
for IEEE1588 can be traced back to the choice of using IEEE1588 in Y.1731.

We have now received a LC request to change the default back to NTP.

NTP is the "natural" choice for an IETF protocol. NTP is specified in IETF and 
is used in other MPLS protocols such as LSP ping. It is implemented on almost 
every host and every router. However in general the implementations provides a 
relatively low precision timestamp, and the NTP time distribution 
infrastructure operates on a best effort basis. Thus even a good client 
implementation would normally have a relatively low quality path to the server, 
which would result in a low quality of timestamp. NTP could be made to work to 
higher accuracy, but defacto upgrading NTP and providing high quality NTP paths 
to the time servers is not getting much attention. Computing timestamp 
differences is easier with NTP.

On the other hand IEEE1588 has defacto become the two way time tranfer protocol 
for precision applications. IEEE1588 only provides high quality time in well 
engineered networks with some form of hop by hop assistance. It is not widely 
implemented other than in equipment targeted to specific markets, although one 
of those markets is in mobile backhaul applications  where we expect to see 
significant initial deployment of MPLS-TP. Computing timestamp differences is 
harder with IEEE1588

The loss-delay work is targeting to be able to do one way packet delay 
measurement, so it does need a higher quality of timestamp than is required in 
general purpose network instrumentation.

Converting from IEEE1588 to NTP is not trivial, since they use different 
epochs, and different representations of sub-second time. In a "traditional" 
NTP implementation the time error due to on the fly conversion is likely to be 
small compared to the time error in the time synchronization system, but an 
IEEE1588 system would need hardware conversion to maintain the accuracy for an 
NTP timestamp.

So the question arises, should we make IEEE1588 or NTP the default for 
draft-ietf-mpls-loss-delay. Much as I would like to suggest that we should go 
back to NTP for consistency with other IETF protocols, I have difficulty 
reconciling this with the situation in network deployments and thus suggest 
that we continue to use IEEE1588.

What is the opinion of the working group?

Stewart (speaking as a draft editor)

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