Time Protocol
Internet protocol suite |
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Application layer |
Transport layer |
Internet layer |
Link layer |
The Time Protocol is a network protocol in the
The Time Protocol may be implemented over the
The fixed 32-bit data format means that the timestamp rolls over approximately every 136 years, with the first such occurrence on 7 February 2036. Programs that use the Time Protocol must be carefully designed to use context-dependent information to distinguish these dates from those in 1900.
Many Unix-like operating systems used the Time Protocol to monitor or synchronize their clocks using the rdate utility, but this function was superseded by the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and the corresponding ntpdate utility. NTP is more sophisticated in various ways, among them that its resolution is finer than one second.
Inetd implementation
On most UNIX-like operating systems a Time Protocol server is built into the
time stream tcp nowait root internal time dgram udp wait root internal
See also
- Echo Protocol
- Discard Protocol
- Daytime Protocol
- Character Generator Protocol
- rdate, a tool for querying the current time from a network server