This is probably going to be one of the shortest posts I have ever written, about an invaluable protocol for every network. NTP stands for Network Time Protocol and is a protocol, you guessed it, that is responsible for time synchronization in a network.
There are basically two reasons why configuring NTP on your network:
- Logging
- Authentication
NTP makes sure that the time on your network (NTP clients, the ones who receive time info, can be servers, laptops, printers, … ) is always as accurate as possible compared to IAT (international atomic clock). This is a time maintained by several atomic clocks around the world. More info can be found here.
Logging and monitoring
Having a correct time is crucial if you want to compare different logs from different devices. If you want to be able to do any correlation, you will need to be able to rely on the correct time set on your devices.
Authentication
Also there are numerous authentication that are time based. Certificate based authentication, Kerberos , … just to name a few.
As always, this first article just scratches the surface and we will go deeper into the internals of NTP in the next article. Please let me know in the comments what you want more information on.
