Principles of Robust Timing over the Internet: The key to synchronizing clocks over networks is taming delay variability.

Abstract

Everyone, and most everything, needs a clock, and computers are no exception. Clocks tend to drift off if left to themselves, however, so it is necessary to bring them to heel periodically through synchronizing to some other reference clock of higher accuracy. An inexpensive and convenient way to do this is over a computer network.

References

1. Endace. Endace Measurement Systems. DAG series PCI and PCI-X cards; http://www.endace.com/networkMCards.htm.
2. Mills, D. L. 2006. Computer Network Time Synchronization: The Network Time Protocol. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Inc.
3. Ridoux, J., Veitch, D. RADclock Project Web page; http://www.cubinlab.ee.unimelb.edu.au/radclock/.
4. Veitch, D., Ridoux, J., Korada, S. B. 2009. Robust synchronization of absolute and difference clocks over networks. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 17(2): 417***430. DOI: 10.1109/TNET.2008.926505.

Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks

• General and reference

  • Cross-computing tools and techniques

    • Performance

• Hardware

  • Communication hardware, interfaces and storage

• Networks

  • Network performance evaluation