Using Network Time Protocol (NTP) in Your Network

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) public domain software from the University of Delaware is included in the Solaris software starting with the Solaris 2.6 release.

NTP enables you to manage precise time and network clock synchronization in a network environment. The xntpd daemon sets and maintains the system time-of-day. The xntpd daemon is a complete implementation of the version 3 standard, as defined by RFC 1305.

The xntpd daemon reads the /etc/inet/ntp.conf file at system startup. See xntpd(1M) for information about configuration options.

Keep the following in mind when using NTP in your network:

• The xntpd daemon takes up minimal system resources.

• An NTP client synchronizes automatically with an NTP server when it boots, and if it gets out of sync, it will resync again when it sees a time server.