Episode description
Episode description
Have you ever wondered how computers stay in sync with the time? That is theresponsibility of the Network Time Protocol (NTP). Around since 1985, NTP is one
of the oldest protocols still in use on the internet and its reference
implementation, ntpd, written in C, is still widely used today.
That's a problem. C is a language that is not memory safe, and ntpd has had its
share of security vulnerabilities. Here is a list of CVEs.
As part of Project Pendulum, Folkert de Vries and his colleagues from Tweede
Golf have been working on a Rust implementation of NTP. I sit down with Folkert
to talk about the project, the challenges they faced, and the benefits of using
Rust for this kind of project.
Along the way, we learn about funding open source projects, the challenges of
establishing a new implementation of a protocol, and all sorts of other
interesting things that might or might not be related to NTP.