Time Protocol
primitive Internet clock time protocol
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The TIME service is an Internet protocol defined in RFC 868. Its purpose is to provide a site-independent, machine readable date and time.
TIME can operate over either TCP or UDP. When operating over TCP, a host connects to a server that supports the TIME protocol on TCP port 37. The server then sends the time as a 32-bit unsigned binary number in network byte order representing a number of seconds since 00:00 (midnight) 1 January, 1900 GMT and closes the connection. The host receives the time and closes the connection.
When operating over UDP, the client sends a (usually empty) datagram to UDP port 37. The server responds with a single datagram of length 4 containing the time. There is no connection setup or teardown.
