4.3. Implementations and Platforms
Last update: April 22, 2024 18:49 UTC (7e7bd5857)
This section discusses implementations of NTP for various platforms.
For platforms and operating systems other than those mentioned here, there may be software available. Maybe there are binary program packages available for your computer system. A good starting point is to search this website. Specific products are presented in Section 8.3.
4.3.1 Official Providers
4.3.2 UNIX Systems
4.3.3 Microsoft Windows
4.3.1 Official Providers
Several national time keepers allow reading the time via NTP:
4.3.2 UNIX Systems
The reference implementation of the NTP client and server is available for free. The software is available as C source and it runs on most UNIX-compatible operating systems. The software consists of the following components:
- ntpd
- A daemon process that is both client and server.
- ntpdate
- A utility to set the time once, similar to the popular
rdate command.
- ntpq, ntpdc
- Monitoring and control programs that communicate via UDP with
ntpd.
- ntptrace
- A utility to back-trace the current system time, starting from the local server.
- documentation
- The documentation for the software is definitely worth reading.
- scripts
- There are also several scripts that might be useful or at least a source of ideas if you want to run and monitor NTP.
4.3.3 Microsoft Windows
NTP is the default time synchronization protocol used by the Windows Time service in Windows Server 2012 and higher, Windows 10 or later, and Azure Stack HCI. In addition, SNTP support is included for backwards compatibility with older clients. Refer to How the Windows Time Service Works for more information.
Meinberg provides a GUI installer of the latest NTP version for Window XP and later.