Performance Comparison Between Network Time Security Protocol Drafts: Improvements and Accuracy of the Latest NTS Draft

This paper compares the time synchronization performance of the standard Network Time Protocol (NTP) versus secured NTP using the Network Time Security (NTS) protocol and describes the improvements of the current draft-ietf-ntp-using-nts-for-ntp-17 (NTS-17) compared to draft-ietf-ntp-using-nts-for-ntp-06 (NTS-06) already investigated in [1]. The measurements are based on the implementations of these NTS drafts by the Ostfalia University of Applied Science, both using an NTS-ready NTP version likewise implemented by the Ostfalia, and show the effects of the NTS security mechanisms on time synchronization accuracy.