## RFC 867 |  |

    Network Working Group                                          J. Postel
    Request for Comments: 867                                            ISI
                                                                    May 1983

                                Daytime Protocol

    This RFC specifies a standard for the ARPA Internet community.  Hosts on
    the ARPA Internet that choose to implement a Daytime Protocol are
    expected to adopt and implement this standard.

    A useful debugging and measurement tool is a daytime service.  A daytime
    service simply sends a the current date and time as a character string
    without regard to the input.

    TCP Based Daytime Service

       One daytime service is defined as a connection based application on
       TCP.  A server listens for TCP connections on TCP port 13.  Once a
       connection is established the current date and time is sent out the
       connection as a ascii character string (and any data received is
       thrown away).  The service closes the connection after sending the
       quote.

    UDP Based Daytime Service

       Another daytime service service is defined as a datagram based
       application on UDP.  A server listens for UDP datagrams on UDP port
       13.  When a datagram is received, an answering datagram is sent
       containing the current date and time as a ASCII character string (the
       data in the received datagram is ignored).

    Daytime Syntax

       There is no specific syntax for the daytime.  It is recommended that
       it be limited to the ASCII printing characters, space, carriage
       return, and line feed.  The daytime should be just one line.

          One popular syntax is:

             Weekday, Month Day, Year Time-Zone

             Example:

                Tuesday, February 22, 1982 17:37:43-PST

    Postel                                                          [Page 1]

    RFC 867                                                         May 1983
    Daytime Protocol

          Another popular syntax is that used in SMTP:

             dd mmm yy hh:mm:ss zzz

             Example:

                02 FEB 82 07:59:01 PST

    NOTE:  For machine useful time use the Time Protocol (RFC-868).

    Postel                                                          [Page 2]