ikdao Time - NTP Server with NTS Support

Server Addresses

• time.ikdao.org
• 0.time.ikdao.org
• 1.time.ikdao.org
• 2.time.ikdao.org

What is NTP and NTS?

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a long‑standing protocol (RFC 1305, RFC 5905) that synchronises the clocks of computers over IP networks. It uses a hierarchy of stratum levels and can achieve millisecond‑level accuracy on the public internet.

Network Time Security (NTS) adds cryptographic authentication to NTP (RFC 8915). It protects against man‑in‑the‑middle attacks and replay attacks by using TLS for key exchange and AES‑GCM for message integrity.

Why Use NTP and NTS?

• Accurate time is essential for security (TLS certificates, Kerberos), logging, and distributed systems.
• NTP provides the time‑synchronisation backbone.
• NTS ensures that the time data cannot be tampered with, giving cryptographic confidence in the received timestamps.
• ikdao’s servers support both, so you can start with plain NTP and upgrade to NTS without changing the server address.

How to Use NTP/NTS

Linux (systemd‑timesyncd, chrony, ntp)

# systemd-timesyncd (supports NTS from v252)
sudo sed -i 's/^#\?Servers=.*/Servers=time.ikdao.org/' /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf
sudo systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd

# chrony (NTS support in 4.5+)
sudo bash -c 'cat >> /etc/chrony.conf <> /etc/ntp.conf <

sudo systemsetup -setnetworktimeserver time.ikdao.org
sudo systemsetup -setusingnetworktime on