I am a member of FLOSSK (https://www.flossk.org/) and I have started a new project for creating a few reliable NTP servers across the country.
As you may know, Kosovo’s internet connection with the neighboring countries is not the best. In addition to that, Albania and Montenegro have 0 NTP servers, Macedonia and Serbia have a few but the connection and reliability is not great.
On the other hand, as FLOSSK, we try to push for using Linux and open source as much as possible. And, most distros, if not all, come with programmed URL which points to 0,1,2,3.pool.ntp
You would help us a lot if you created a zone with Kosovo country code XK for us. So xk.pool.ntp
XK is supported by MaxMind, and many other organisations.
We want to manage this zone and get all universities, NGO’s and government offices that have started using Linux to point to xk.pool.ntp and solve all the problems. I would even invite the regional Linux users to use our pool of NTP servers.
I don’t think so. XK is not in the IANA registry of ccTLDs. In fact the X* ones are user-assigned per ISO3166-1 alpha 2 definitions, and you won’t be able to get it assigned for your country, even after your country is no longer claimed as a province by Serbia.
Taiwan faces a similar scenario. Originally accepted in UN as (Republic of) China and now being claimed by (People’s Repubic of) China, this island still has a proper assigned ccTLD of TW, even though its description is somewhat controversial.
In conclusion, you should acquire one proper assigned ccTLD (eg. KO) first.
alica, thanks for your suggested solution, and you are right. UN and ccTLD is the right way to go. But, it’s been 20 years and it doesn’t seem to end. It has become a business of corrupt politicians. And I hope this discussion doesn’t turn into a political issue because we had enough.
However, we have a technical problem and we can solve it by using whatever domain we want. We can use something like “pool.ntp.flossk.org__” to point to our pool of NTP servers. But we want to join ntp.org__ and make our servers available to all ntp users.
Right now, XK doesn’t mean anything to Kosovo, and it is not going to be the final country code for Kosovo either. But it has been used by so many organisations and therefore we want to be consistent.
We are pushing for using LINUX and LibreOffice in schools, businesses, government, and so far we have seen that all Linux distros come with generic ntp settings. Right now, MaxMind, does use XK to refer to Kosovo, but ntp.org__ has no idea what ntp servers are in Kosovo. So, if were to manage XK.pool.ntp.org___ we can solve this problem.
If you all agree, please create xk.pool.ntp.org__ or if you have other suggestions please advise?
The final decision would be up to @Ask, as he runs everything. Honestly, I don’t think it would be a bad idea… If Kosovo ever got an official code, xk could be kept as an alias for however long would be necessary.
It’s done on the beta site already – just waiting for the next push to production.
@alica We’re using, I think, ISO_3166-1_alpha-2; not the IANA ccTLDs. UK being that instead of GB (which also works …) is a historical artifact. We can support anything that MaxMind supports in their GeoIP database.
