Hi All,

I am not a 100% sure what is exactly required here. So FWIW,

1) If it is a question about the encoding and wire format of the NTP
timestamp (NTP synchronize to the UTC timescale), then I would suggest
looking at the working draft
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-ntp-packet-timestamps-02#page-6

2) If it is about the type of time and date format to be used, the closest
reference would be RFC 3339. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339

3) If the idea is just to refrain from mentioning "NTP" at all, then I
would agree with what Jon said  to go with "64-bit, unsigned Unix time”
should be good enough.

Best,
Aanchal.

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 1:08 PM, Jon Callas <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> > On Aug 15, 2018, at 4:31 AM, Rob Stradling <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > I just started to prepare a PR for this, but...
> >
> > RFC6962 says:
> >   "timestamp" is the current NTP Time [RFC5905], measured since the
> >   epoch (January 1, 1970, 00:00), ignoring leap seconds, in
> >   milliseconds.
> >
> > 6962-bis currently says:
> >   "timestamp" is the current NTP Time [RFC5905], measured in
> >   milliseconds since the epoch (January 1, 1970, 00:00 UTC), ignoring
> >   leap seconds.
> >
> > RFC5905 section 6 says:
> >  "In the date and timestamp formats, the prime epoch, or base date of
> >   era 0, is 0 h 1 January 1900 UTC, when all bits are zero."
> >
> > 1970 != 1900, and (IINM) NTP time does not ignore leap seconds.
> >
> > ISTM that what we're actually using is Unix time (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time), and so we should say that we're
> using Unix time.  It makes no sense to claim to be using NTP time if we're
> not actually doing that.
> >
> > Two possible ways forward:
> >
> > 1. Replace the "NTP time" references with "Unix time", and find a
> suitable reference (any ideas?) to point to.
> >
> > 2. Switch to actually using the 64-bit NTP timestamp format.  This might
> confuse implementers that are already familiar with RFC6962 though.
> >
> > Any preferences?  (I favour option 1).
>
> Thank you for this. I think it’s important to define it to Unix time or
> equivalent rather than NTP. At best, NTP is going to refer it to Unix time
> or equivalent, and you’d have the problem of people debating what to do if
> they use some other protocol than NTP.
>
> I think that if you say, “64-bit, unsigned Unix time” it’s pretty
> well-defined. You could even explain once that it’s the number of seconds
> since 1 January 1970 UTC and then it’s defined about as completely as
> possible.
>
>         Jon
>
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