Year 2106 bug

RFC 8877, "Guidelines for Defining Packet Timestamps", IETF NTP working group (Mizrahi, Fabini, and Morton)

From the the NTP (network time protocol) IETF working group comes RFC 8877 (September 2020). The authors (Mizrahi, Fabini, and Morton) use the term "wraparound" to specify the condition at the end of the time epoch.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8877

Packet timestamps are used in various network protocols. Typical applications of packet timestamps include delay measurement, clock synchronization, and others. The following table presents a (non- exhaustive) list of protocols that use packet timestamps and the timestamp formats used in each of these protocols.

Rather than try to reproduce the table exactly in text, here is an image of it for reference to the original. NTP and PTP (precision time protocol) timestamps are described in some detail, along with several other timestamp formats used by various other protocols.

The (NTP) epoch is 1 January 1900 at 00:00 UTC.

This time format wraps around every 2^32 seconds, which is roughly 136 years. The next wraparound will occur in the year 2036.

The PTP [IEEE1588] epoch is 1 January 1970 00:00:00 TAI.

This time format wraps around every 2^32 seconds, which is roughly 136 years. The next wraparound will occur in the year 2106.

Screenshot 2024-01-11 at 11.18.10 PM