Building an Elixir-based NTP Server

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Building an Elixir-based NTP Server
The article showcases a project that involves reverse engineering the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and implementing a simple NTP server in Elixir. Andrei C. starts by setting up a network packet capture to analyze NTP requests and responses using tcpdump and Wireshark. The author then moves on to dissecting the NTP request packet and crafting an NTP response bit-by-bit in Elixir, demonstrating bitstring handling, conversion between binary and hexadecimal, and timestamp management. Elixir's :gen_udp module is utilized to create a UDP server, and GenServer is adopted for process management. By the end, a functioning NTP server is built that can respond to clients with the current time. As a side note, the author acknowledges that while this project cannot be used to fake system uptime, it serves as a valuable learning experience in the language's network and concurrency features.

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