Leap Second Smearing with NTP
-----------------------------

By Martin Burnicki
with some edits by Harlan Stenn

The NTP software protocol and its reference implementation, ntpd, were
originally designed to distribute UTC time over a network as accurately as
possible.

Unfortunately, leap seconds are scheduled to be inserted into or deleted
from the UTC time scale in irregular intervals to keep the UTC time scale
synchronized with the Earth rotation.  Deletions haven't happened, yet, but
insertions have happened over 30 times.

The problem is that POSIX requires 86400 seconds in a day, and there is no
prescribed way to handle leap seconds in POSIX.

Whenever a leap second is to be handled ntpd either:

- passes the leap second announcement down to the OS kernel (if the OS
supports this) and the kernel handles the leap second automatically, or

- applies the leap second correction itself.

NTP servers also pass a leap second warning flag down to their clients via
the normal NTP packet exchange, so clients also become aware of an
approaching leap second, and can handle the leap second appropriately.


The Problem on Unix-like Systems
--------------------------------
If a leap second is to be inserted then in most Unix-like systems the OS
kernel just steps the time back by 1 second at the beginning of the leap
second, so the last second of the UTC day is repeated and thus duplicate
timestamps can occur.

Unfortunately there are lots of applications which get confused it the
system time is stepped back, e.g. due to a leap second insertion.  Thus,
many users have been looking for ways to avoid this, and tried to introduce
workarounds which may work properly, or not.

So even though these Unix kernels normally can handle leap seconds, the way
they do this is not optimal for applications.

One good way to handle the leap second is to use ntp_gettime() instead of
the usual calls, because ntp_gettime() includes a "clock state" variable
that will actually tell you if the time you are receiving is OK or not, and
if it is OK, if the current second is an in-progress leap second.  But even
though this mechanism has been available for about 20 years' time, almost
nobody uses it.


NTP Client for Windows Contains a Workaround
--------------------------------------------
The Windows system time knows nothing about leap seconds, so for many years
the Windows port of ntpd provides a workaround where the system time is
slewed by the client to compensate the leap second.

Thus it is not required to use a smearing NTP server for Windows clients,
but of course the smearing server approach also works.


The Leap Smear Approach
-----------------------
Due to the reasons mentioned above some support for leap smearing has
recently been implemented in ntpd.  This means that to insert a leap second
an NTP server adds a certain increasing "smear" offset to the real UTC time
sent to its clients, so that after some predefined interval the leap second
offset is compensated.  The smear interval should be long enough,
e.g. several hours, so that NTP clients can easily follow the clock drift
caused by the smeared time.

During the period while the leap smear is being performed, ntpd will include
a specially-formatted 'refid' in time packets that contain "smeared" time.
This refid is of the form 254.x.y.z, where x.y.z are 24 encoded bits of the
smear value.

With this approach the time an NTP server sends to its clients still matches
UTC before the leap second, up to the beginning of the smear interval, and
again corresponds to UTC after the insertion of the leap second has
finished, at the end of the smear interval.  By examining the first byte of
the refid, one can also determine if the server is offering smeared time or
not.

Of course, clients which receive the "smeared" time from an NTP server don't
have to (and even must not) care about the leap second anymore.  Smearing is
just transparent to the clients, and the clients don't even notice there's a
leap second.


Pros and Cons of the Smearing Approach
--------------------------------------
The disadvantages of this approach are:

- During the smear interval the time provided by smearing NTP servers
differs significantly from UTC, and thus from the time provided by normal,
non-smearing NTP servers.  The difference can be up to 1 second, depending
on the smear algorithm.

- Since smeared time differs from true UTC, and many applications require
correct legal time (UTC), there may be legal consequences to using smeared
time.  Make sure you check to see if this requirement affects you.

However, for applications where it's only important that all computers have
the same time and a temporary offset of up to 1 s to UTC is acceptable, a
better approach may be to slew the time in a well defined way, over a
certain interval, which is what we call smearing the leap second.


The Motivation to Implement Leap Smearing
-----------------------------------------
Here is some historical background for ntpd, related to smearing/slewing
time.

Up to ntpd 4.2.4, if kernel support for leap seconds was either not
available or was not enabled, ntpd didn't care about the leap second at all.
So if ntpd was run with -x and thus kernel support wasn't used, ntpd saw a
sudden 1 s offset after the leap second and normally would have stepped the
time by -1 s a few minutes later.  However, 'ntpd -x' does not step the time
but "slews" the 1-second correction, which takes 33 minutes and 20 seconds
to complete.  This could be considered a bug, but certainly this was only an
accidental behavior.

However, as we learned in the discussion in http://bugs.ntp.org/2745, this
behavior was very much appreciated since indeed the time was never stepped
back, and even though the start of the slewing was somewhat undefined and
depended on the poll interval.  The system time was off by 1 second for
several minutes before slewing even started.

In ntpd 4.2.6 some code was added which let ntpd step the time at UTC
midnight to insert a leap second, if kernel support was not used.
Unfortunately this also happened if ntpd was started with -x, so the folks
who expected that the time was never stepped when ntpd was run with -x found
this wasn't true anymore, and again from the discussion in NTP bug 2745 we
learn that there were even some folks who patched ntpd to get the 4.2.4
behavior back.

In 4.2.8 the leap second code was rewritten and some enhancements were
introduced, but the resulting code still showed the behavior of 4.2.6,
i.e. ntpd with -x would still step the time.  This has only recently been
fixed in the current ntpd stable code, but this fix is only available with a
certain patch level of ntpd 4.2.8.

So a possible solution for users who were looking for a way to come over the
leap second without the time being stepped could have been to check the
version of ntpd installed on each of their systems.  If it's still 4.2.4 be
sure to start the client ntpd with -x.  If it's 4.2.6 or 4.2.8 it won't work
anyway except if you had a patched ntpd version instead of the original
version.  So you'd need to upgrade to the current -stable code to be able to
run ntpd with -x and get the desired result, so you'd still have the
requirement to check/update/configure every single machine in your network
that runs ntpd.

Google's leap smear approach is a very efficient solution for this, for
sites that do not require correct timestamps for legal purposes.  You just
have to take care that your NTP servers support leap smearing and configure
those few servers accordingly.  If the smear interval is long enough so that
NTP clients can follow the smeared time it doesn't matter at all which
version of ntpd is installed on a client machine, it just works, and it even
works around kernel bugs due to the leap second.

Since all clients follow the same smeared time the time difference between
the clients during the smear interval is as small as possible, compared to
the -x approach.  The current leap second code in ntpd determines the point
in system time when the leap second is to be inserted, and given a
particular smear interval it's easy to determine the start point of the
smearing, and the smearing is finished when the leap second ends, i.e. the
next UTC day begins.

The maximum error doesn't exceed what you'd get with the old smearing caused
by -x in ntpd 4.2.4, so if users could accept the old behavior they would
even accept the smearing at the server side.

In order to affect the local timekeeping as little as possible the leap
smear support currently implemented in ntpd does not affect the internal
system time at all.  Only the timestamps and refid in outgoing reply packets
*to clients* are modified by the smear offset, so this makes sure the basic
functionality of ntpd is not accidentally broken.  Also peer packets
exchanged with other NTP servers are based on the real UTC system time and
the normal refid, as usual.

The leap smear implementation is optionally available in ntp-4.2.8p3 and
later, and the changes can be tracked via http://bugs.ntp.org/2855.


Using NTP's Leap Second Smearing
--------------------------------
- Leap Second Smearing MUST NOT be used for public servers, e.g. servers
provided by metrology institutes, or servers participating in the NTP pool
project.  There would be a high risk that NTP clients get the time from a
mixture of smearing and non-smearing NTP servers which could result in
undefined client behavior.  Instead, leap second smearing should only be
configured on time servers providing dedicated clients with time, if all
those clients can accept smeared time.

- Leap Second Smearing is NOT configured by default.  The only way to get
this behavior is to invoke the ./configure script from the NTP source code
package with the --enable-leap-smear parameter before the executables are
built.

- Even if ntpd has been compiled to enable leap smearing support, leap
smearing is only done if explicitly configured.

- The leap smear interval should be at least several hours' long, and up to
1 day (86400s).  If the interval is too short then the applied smear offset
is applied too quickly for clients to follow.  86400s (1 day) is a good
choice.

- If several NTP servers are set up for leap smearing then the *same* smear
interval should be configured on each server.

- Smearing NTP servers DO NOT send a leap second warning flag to client time
requests.  Since the leap second is applied gradually the clients don't even
notice there's a leap second being inserted, and thus there will be no log
message or similar related to the leap second be visible on the clients.

- Since clients don't (and must not) become aware of the leap second at all,
clients getting the time from a smearing NTP server MUST NOT be configured
to use a leap second file.  If they had a leap second file they would apply
the leap second twice: the smeared one from the server, plus another one
inserted by themselves due to the leap second file.  As a result, the
additional correction would soon be detected and corrected/adjusted.

- Clients MUST NOT be configured to poll both smearing and non-smearing NTP
servers at the same time.  During the smear interval they would get
different times from different servers and wouldn't know which server(s) to
accept.


Setting Up A Smearing NTP Server
--------------------------------
If an NTP server should perform leap smearing then the leap smear interval
(in seconds) needs to be specified in the NTP configuration file ntp.conf,
e.g.:

 leapsmearinterval 86400

Please keep in mind the leap smear interval should be between several and 24
hours' long.  With shorter values clients may not be able to follow the
drift caused by the smeared time, and with longer values the discrepancy
between system time and UTC will cause more problems when reconciling
timestamp differences.

When ntpd starts and a smear interval has been specified then a log message
is generated, e.g.:

 ntpd[31120]: config: leap smear interval 86400 s

While ntpd is running with a leap smear interval specified the command:

 ntpq -c rv

reports the smear status, e.g.:

# ntpq -c rv
associd=0 status=4419 leap_add_sec, sync_uhf_radio, 1 event, leap_armed,
version="ntpd 4.2.8p3-RC1@1.3349-o Mon Jun 22 14:24:09 UTC 2015 (26)",
processor="i586", system="Linux/3.7.1", leap=01, stratum=1,
precision=-18, rootdelay=0.000, rootdisp=1.075, refid=MRS,
reftime=d93dab96.09666671 Tue, Jun 30 2015 23:58:14.036,
clock=d93dab9b.3386a8d5 Tue, Jun 30 2015 23:58:19.201, peer=2335,
tc=3, mintc=3, offset=-0.097015, frequency=44.627, sys_jitter=0.003815,
clk_jitter=0.451, clk_wander=0.035, tai=35, leapsec=201507010000,
expire=201512280000, leapsmearinterval=86400, leapsmearoffset=-932.087

In the example above 'leapsmearinterval' reports the configured leap smear
interval all the time, while the 'leapsmearoffset' value is 0 outside the
interval and increases from 0 to -1000 ms over the interval.  So this can be
used to monitor if and how the time sent to clients is smeared.  With a
leapsmearoffset of -.932087, the refid reported in smeared packets would be
254.196.88.176.