[time-nuts] D-Links NTP server vandalism

Tom Van Baak tvb at leapsecond.com
Sat Apr 8 16:53:40 EDT 2006


PHK,

So sorry to hear about your legal adventure.

Have a close look at "NTP" from the 1930's -- at just
5 cents a day [about $0.70 in today's dollar]:

http://www.leapsecond.com/history/usno.htm

Perhaps the problem with NTP (and email, and the
web, etc.) is that the servers do all the work & pay all
the bills and the clients ride for free. One can imagine
a world where time to the second on the net is free,
but the client pays more for ever increasing levels of
delivered precision from the server.

If millisecond NTP cost microcents, and microsecond
NTP cost millicents, then quality NTP sites such as
yours would be competing to have their hostnames
show up in embedded systems. Every stray packet
would be change in your pocket and a reward for the
quality of your implementation instead of a thankless
drain on your bottom line.

Back to your situation; it is possible this abuse by
the vendor gets them in trouble with strict California
spam laws?

/tvb

----- Original Message -----
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 03:37
Subject: [time-nuts] D-Links NTP server vandalism


>
> I'm sure some of you thought time-signals were an risk-free hobby:
>
> http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/dlink/
>
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
incompetence.








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