Technical data

FastIron Ethernet Switch Administration Guide 23
53-1002637-02
Network Time Protocol Version 4 (NTPv4)
2
• Broadcast client
• NTP supports maximum of 8 servers and 8 peers. The 8 peers includes statically configured
and dynamically learned.
• NTP can operate in authenticate or non-authenticate mode. Only symmetric key authentication
is supported.
• By default, NTP operates in default VLAN and it can be changed.
Limitations
• FastIron devices cannot operate as primary time server (or stratum 1). It only serves as
secondary time server (stratum 2 to 15).
• NTP server and client cannot communicate using hostnames.
• NTP is not supported on VRF enabled interface or ve.
• Autokey public key authentication is not supported.
• The NTP version 4 Extension fields are not supported. The packets containing the extension
fields are discarded.
• The NTP packets having control (6) or private (7) packet mode is not supported. NTP packets
with control and private modes will be discarded.
• On reboot or switchover, all the NTP state information will be lost and time synchronization will
start fresh.
• NTP multicast server/client and manycast functionalities are not supported.
• NTP versions 1 and 2 are not supported.
• NTP MIB is not supported.
NTP and SNTP
FastIron 07.3.00c and earlier releases implements SNTP for time synchronization. In FastIron
07.3.00d, NTP can be used for time synchronization in FCX devices with router images. From
FastIron 8.0 release onwards, NTP can be used for time synchronization in all FastIron devices with
both router and switch images.
NTP and SNTP implementations cannot operate at the same time and one of them has to be
disabled.
On downgrading from FastIron 07.3.00d to FastIron 07.3.00c or lower version, the entire NTP
configuration is lost.
NTP server
A NTP server will provide the correct network time on your device using the Network time protocol
(NTP). Network Time Protocol can be used to synchronize the time on devices across a network. A
NTP time server is used to obtain the correct time from a time source and adjust the local time in
each connecting device.
The NTP server functionality is enabled when you use the ntp command, provided SNTP
configuration is already removed.