coreSNTP
SNTP C client library for small IoT devices (MCU or small MPU)
Introduction
The coreSNTP library provides a client for the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) to allow devices
to synchronize their system clocks with time servers. This library implements the SNTPv4 specification defined in
RFC 4330. An SNTP client
can request the time from both NTP and SNTP servers.
The library provides two API layers to provide different levels of development flexibility to application developers.
Either of these layers can be used by the application developer to create an SNTP
client in their application:
- Serializer/Deserializer and Utilities - This layer provides functions to serialize SNTP time
requests and deserialize SNTP response packets, as well as some utility functions that are helpful when you set up
an SNTP client in an application.
- Client - This layer provides additional managed
functionality for network operations including DNS resolution, sending and receiving SNTP packets over UDP,
authenticating servers for security (if enabled), notifying the system to correct its time with information
from the server, as well as handling rejection of time requests by servers. This layer calls the Serializer/De-Serializer
layer to serialize and deserialize SNTP packets sent and received on the network. (Note: This layer
performs network and authentication operations through a user-defined implementation of the interfaces exposed by
the library.)
The Serializer/De-serializer layer does not have a dependency on any interface. It can be integrated
in an application for use as-is, whereas the Client layer decouples from platform-specific calls by
exposing the interface operations of network I/O, cryptographic calculations and getting and updating system time. If
you develop against the Client layer, you must implement these interfaces for your platform. For more
information on the interfaces, refer to the Porting Guide.
The library is written in C and designed to be compliant with ISO C90 and
MISRA C:2012. The library has no dependencies on any additional libraries other than the standard C library. The
library has proofs showing safe
memory use and no heap allocation, making it suitable for IoT microcontrollers, but also fully portable to other platforms.
When you design an SNTP client for time synchronization in your application, we recommend that you use authentication
to communicate with the SNTP/NTP servers you have chosen. Mutual authentication provides protection against
malicious modification or spoofing of server responses, and thereby prevents malicious corruption of time in devices. For an
example of using authentication with coreSNTP library, refer to the coreSNTP demo.
This library can be freely used and is distributed under the MIT open source license.
Code Size of coreSNTP library (example generated with GCC for ARM Cortex-M) |
File |
With -O1 Optimization |
With -Os Optimization |
core_sntp_client.c |
1.7K |
1.4K |
core_sntp_serializer.c |
1.0K |
0.8K |
Total estimates |
2.7K |
2.2K |
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