The Daytime Protocol is a service in the
Internet Protocol Suite
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the sui ...
, defined in 1983 in RFC 867. It is intended for testing and measurement purposes in computer networks.
A host may connect to a server that supports the Daytime Protocol on either
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is common ...
(TCP) or
User Datagram Protocol
In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network ...
(UDP) port 13. The server returns an ASCII character string of the current date and time in an unspecified format.
Inetd implementation
On
UNIX-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
operating systems a daytime server is usually built into the
inetd
inetd (internet service daemon) is a super-server daemon on many Unix systems that provides Internet services. For each configured service, it listens for requests from connecting clients. Requests are served by spawning a process which runs the ...
(or
xinetd
In computer networking, xinetd (''Extended Internet Service Daemon'') is an open-source super-server daemon which runs on many Unix-like systems, and manages Internet-based connectivity.
It offers a more secure alternative to the older inetd ...
)
daemon
Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and Hell ...
. The service is usually not enabled by default. It may be enabled by adding the following lines to the file {{mono, /etc/inetd.conf and telling inetd to reload its configuration:
daytime stream tcp nowait root internal
daytime dgram udp wait root internal
An example output may be:
Thursday, February 2, 2006 13:45:51-PST
See also
*
List of well-known ports
*
Echo Protocol
The Echo Protocol is a service in the Internet Protocol Suite defined in RFC 862. It was originally proposed for testing and measurement of round-trip times in IP networks.
A host may connect to a server that supports the Echo Protocol using the ...
*
QOTD
The Quote of the Day (QOTD) service is a member of the Internet protocol suite, defined in RFC 865. As indicated there, the QOTD concept predated the specification, when QOTD was used by mainframe sysadmins to broadcast a daily quote on request by ...
*
Time Protocol
The Time Protocol is a network protocol in the Internet Protocol Suite defined in 1983 in RFC 868 by Jon Postel and K. Harrenstein. Its purpose is to provide a site-independent, machine readable date and time.
The Time Protocol may be implemented ...
*
Network Time Protocol
External links
RFC 867List of NIST time servers supporting this protocol
Network time-related software
Application layer protocols