followed by its name and the procedure or value which controls it. Note
that variables are in lower case, while parameters are in upper case.
Additional details on formats and use are presented in later sections
and Appendices.
Common Variables
The following variables are common to two or more of the system, peer
and packet classes. Additional variables are specific to the optional
authentication mechanism as described in Appendix C. When necessary to
distinguish between common variables of the same name, the variable
identifier will be used.
Peer Address (peer.peeraddr, pkt.peeraddr), Peer Port (peer.peerport,
pkt.peerport): These are the 32-bit Internet address and 16-bit port
number of the peer.
Host Address (peer.hostaddr, pkt.hostaddr), Host Port (peer.hostport,
pkt.hostport): These are the 32-bit Internet address and 16-bit port
number of the host. They are included among the state variables to
support multi-homing.
Leap Indicator (sys.leap, peer.leap, pkt.leap): This is a two-bit code
warning of an impending leap second to be inserted in the NTP timescale.
The bits are set before 23:59 on the day of insertion and reset after
00:00 on the following day. This causes the number of seconds (rollover
interval) in the day of insertion to be increased or decreased by one.
In the case of primary servers the bits are set by operator
intervention, while in the case of secondary servers the bits are set by
the protocol. The two bits, bit 0 and bit 1, respectively, are coded as
follows:
@Z_TBL_BEG = COLUMNS(2), DIMENSION(IN), COLWIDTHS(E1,E8), WIDTH(5.0000),
ABOVE(.0830), BELOW(.0830), HGUTTER(.0560), KEEP(OFF), ALIGN(CT)
@Z_TBL_BODY = TABLE TEXT, TABLE TEXT
00, no warning
01, last minute has 61 seconds
10, last minute has 59 seconds
11, alarm condition (clock not synchronized)
@Z_TBL_END =
In all except the alarm condition (112), NTP itself does nothing with
these bits, except pass them on to the time-conversion routines that are
not part of NTP. The alarm condition occurs when, for whatever reason,
the local clock is not synchronized, such as when first coming up or
after an extended period when no primary reference source is available.
Mode (peer.mode, pkt.mode): This is an integer indicating the
association mode, with values coded as follows:
@Z_TBL_BEG = COLUMNS(2), DIMENSION(IN), COLWIDTHS(E1,E8), WIDTH(5.0000),
ABOVE(.0830), BELOW(.0830), HGUTTER(.0560), KEEP(OFF), ALIGN(CT)
@Z_TBL_BODY = TABLE TEXT, TABLE TEXT