My DNSTIME

My DNS Time

$ dig +short txt blah.dnstime.d-k-i.org.
"2026-07-05T19:26:49+0000 74.125.181.150 -"

July 2026 (c) RLamb

Many of the low level devices I design need at least some sense of time. For example for synchronization with a server and/or cryptographic operations such as 2-factor authentication, certificate validation, key exchange, etc. This is often before an Internet connection has been fully established. This need to "walk before I run" makes time essential. I could put a GPS module in there or some WWVB receiver or cell radio but id like to do this for much less cost. Since dns lookups are usually clear through public wifi, I just modified some of my old dns server code to return time on the fly. An A record lookup returns 4-byte/32bits of time which can be easily decoded in embedded s/w (example script here). I also return human readable time for TXT record lookups (shown above where "blah" can be replaced with anything). Its not perfect but it enables many of my projects. For the time being, feel free to hit my dns time server *.dnstime.d-k-i.org. Ill try to find a simpler/shorter domain name.

Other stuff here