Keeping track of the time is essential in the day-to-day running of our lives. We need to know when to start work, when to leave and even when to get up in the morning.
There are of course a myriad of devices that help us keep track of the time of day from wrist-watches and mobile phones to the display on our DVD player and in our cars, clocks, of one sort or another are everywhere.
Computers are no different. Time is essential for the functioning of computer applications, everything from sending and email to debugging a system is reliant on a time stamp.
Computers have their own clocks, real time chips, but unfortunately these on-board clocks are not very accurate timepieces and are prone to drift and the subsequent differences in time on a network can lead to all sorts of problems.
A network time server gets around this problem by using an absolute time source, that is a time source that is so accurate that it would barely lose a second in millions of years.
The only clocks capable of supplying such accurate time are atomic clocks but unfortunately these are highly expensive and delicate machines only to be found in large scale physics laboratories. Thankfully a network time server can receive the time told by these devices by using either the Internet (although that can be inaccurate and cause security problems, the GPS network or specialist radio transmissions.
These time signals broadcast UTC – coordinated universal time, which is a global timescale developed to ensure networks around the world are keeping the same time.
The network time server will synchronise the entire network of computers to this time, continually checking for drift and ensuring millisecond accuracy.
By using a network time server, security is increased and time-sensitive applications will run without error.
