
Appendix B: MD5 Authentication and NTP Broadcast Mode | Introduction to MD5 |
The MD5 message digest is 16 bytes in length and it follows the key identifier in the signature. A server authenticates the NTP packet from a client by first looking up the key by reference to the key identifier. It then generates the MD5 message digest based on the key and the NTP data and compares the resulting message digest to the client packet’s MD5 message digest. If the two compare, a NTP reply packet is generated with a new MD5 signature. If the MD5 message digests do not agree, then the NTP client packet is ignored by the Symmetricom server.
To use NTP Broadcast mode, you also need the following information:
•Maximum number of user definable MD5 keys in the “ntp.keys” file: 24
•Maximum number of trusted keys that can be defined in an “ntp.conf” file: 20
•Maximum number of keys that can be used in NTP broadcast mode: 20
•Maximum text length of MD5 key value in “ntp.keys” file: 32 ASCII characters
For more technical information on MD5, see the MD5
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp or
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/software.html
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TimeVault™ User’s Manual |