While reading the detailed and instructive NTP / Network Time Guide For Video Surveillance, I came across the following statement:
The most commonly used time protocol in surveillance (and the IT industry at large) is SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) which is a less complex version of NTP (Network Time Protocol).... Surveillance devices often are not clear whether they support NTP or SNTP. It is common for devices to simply state 'time synchronization' instead of SNTP or NTP specifically. Despite this, they will work with varying time servers...
Which I found odd at first since having been in IT for a number of years I could only vaguely remember hearing SNTP. So I read about it and this is what I discovered
As a transmission protocol (on the wire), NTP and SNTP are identical. Put another way using Wireshark to sniff packets one could not tell from either looking at the requests or the responses whether a SNTP or NTP server was involved.
SNTP and NTP only differ in the algorithms used in the timeserver code itself. Clients can't support just one or the other, since there is no difference in the request. Another interesting time server tidbit: Apparently up until Windows 2000, only an SNTP server was provided with Windows. Since then an NTP server has been included as well and is now the default.
Even so SNTP may indeed be the most commonly used time service in surveillance. Major VMSes may implement their own SNTP service, to reduce server load. DVR/NVR appliances running Linux would be expected to do the same. Though there is no way to tell from the outside.
Does anyone know if VMSes typically run their own timeserver code, or enable either the default NTP or SNTP server on the Windows host?