Time Synchronisation

Methods of keeping track of time have altered throughout history with ever increasing accuracy has being the catalyst for change.

Most methods of timekeeping have traditionally been based on the movement of the Earth around the Sun. For millennia, a day has been divided into 24 equal parts that have become known as hours. Basing our timescales on the rotation of the Earth has been adequate for most of our historical needs, however as technology advances, the need for an ever increasingly accurate timescale has been evident.

The problem with the traditional methods became apparent when the first truly accurate timepieces – the atomic clock was developed in the 1950’s. Because these timepieces was based on the frequency of atoms and were accurate to within a second every million years it was soon discovered that our day, that we had always presumed as being precisely 24 hours, altered from day to day.

The affects of the Moon’s gravity on our oceans causes the Earth to slow and speed up during its rotation – some days are longer than 24 hours whilst others are shorter. Whilst this minute differences in the length of a day have made little difference to our daily lives it this inaccuracy has implications for many of our modern technologies such as satellite communication and global positioning.

A timescale has been developed to deal with the inaccuracies in the Earth’s spin – Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It is based on the traditional 24-hour Earth rotation known as Greenwich Meantime (GMT) but accounts for the inaccuracies in the earth’s spin by having so-called ‘Leap Seconds’ added (or subtracted).

As UTC is based on the time told by atomic clocks it is incredibly accurate and therefore has been adopted as the World’s civilian timescale and is used by business and commerce all over the globe.

Most computer networks can be synchronised to UTC by using a dedicated NTP time server.

To receive and distribute and authenticated UTC time source there are currently two types of NTP server, the GPS NTP server and the radio referenced NTP server. While both these systems distribute UTC in identical ways the way they receive the timing information differs.

A GPS NTP time server is an ideal time and frequency source because it can provide highly accurate time anywhere in the world using relatively cheap components. Each GPS satellite transmits in two frequencies L2 for the military use and L1 for use by civilians transmitted at 1575 MHz, Low-cost GPS antennas and receivers are now widely available.

The radio signal transmitted by the satellite can pass through windows but can be blocked by buildings so the ideal location for a GPS antenna is on a rooftop with a good view of the sky. The more satellites it can receive from the better the signal. However, roof-mounted antennas can be prone to lighting strikes or other voltage surges so a suppressor is highly recommend being installed inline on the GPS cable.

The cable between the GPS antenna and receiver is also critical. The maximum distance that a cable can run is normally only 20-30 metres but a high quality coax cable combined with a GPS amplifier placed in-line to boost the gain of the antenna can allow in excess of 100 metre cable runs. This can provide difficulties in installation in larger buildings if the server is too far from the antenna.

An alternative solution is to use a radio referenced NTP time server. These rely on a number of national time and frequency radio transmissions that that broadcast UTC time. In Britain the signal (called MSF) is broadcast by the National Physics Laboratory in Cumbria which serves as the United Kingdom’s national time reference, there are also similar systems in the USA (WWVB) and in France, Germany and Japan.

A radio based NTP server usually consists of a rack-mountable time server, and an antenna, consisting of a ferrite bar inside a plastic enclosure, which receives the radio time and frequency broadcast. It should always be mounted horizontally at a right angle toward the transmission for optimum signal strength. Data is sent in pulses, 60 a second. These signals provides UTC time to an accuracy of 100 microseconds, however, the radio signal has a finite range and is vulnerable to interference.

Time synchronisation can be crucial for many computer networks. Correct synchronisation can protect a system from all sorts of security threats it will also ensure that the network is accurate and reliable but are dedicated NTP time server systems really necessary or can a network be run securely without a network time server?

Here are five questions to ask yourself to see if your network needs to be adequately synchronised.

1. Does your network conduct time sensitive transactions across the internet?

If yes then accurate network time synchronisation is essential. Time is the only point of reference a computer has to identify two events so when it comes to a transaction across the internet such as sending an email, if it comes from an unsynchronised network, it may arrive before it was technically sent. This may lead to the email not being received as a computer cannot handle negative values when it comes to time.

2. Do you store valuable data?

Data loss is another ramification of not having a synchronised network. When a computer stores data it is stamped with the time. If that time is from an unsynchronised machine on a network then a computer may consider the data already saved or it may overwrite new data with older versions.

3. Is security important to your business and network?

Keeping a network secure is essential if you have any sensitive data on the machines. Malicious users have a myriad of ways of gaining access to computer networks and using the chaos caused by an unsynchronised network is one method they frequently take advantage of. Not having a synchronised network may mean it is impossible to identify if your network has been hacked into too as all records left on log files are time reliant too.

Keeping accurate time on a network with a NTP time server is highly important here is the second part of the article that explains why.

Legal protection – Whether it is a payment dispute with a supplier or customer or even a case of fraud committed against your company only an accurate method of synchronisation will be accepted as a legal defence. An NTP time server is legally auditable and can be used as evidence in a court of law.

Company Credibility:
Being victim to any of these potential hazards can have devastating effects on your own business but also that of your suppliers and customers. Once word gets out too it will soon become common knowledge amongst your competitors, customers and suppliers as news travels quickly in the business world. Keeping credibility is a good enough reason in itself to ensure a computer network is adequately synchronised.

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions then it is time your company invested in a dedicated NTP time server to accurately synchronise you computer network to. Dedicated time servers use the protocol NTP (Network Time Protocol) as a method of distributing a single time source around the internet. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the preferred time standard that most networks are synchronised to.

An NTP time server can receive a secure and accurate UTC time signal from the GPS network or from long wave radio transmissions broadcast by several national physics laboratories.

A global economy has many benefits allowing trade and commerce to be conducted relatively pain free from the other sides of the planet. But conducting business with other countries can have its problems most notably time differences.

We are used to the fact that when we go to bed in Europe, those in Australasia are jest getting up and for many businesses, knowing the time in the country that you trade in is essential. However many global transactions are now conducted online and quite often completely automated.

For this reason computers need to know the exact time too, particularly if they are selling products and services that have a limited quantity and any miscalculation in the time can cause untold errors. For instance, if people across the globe wish to buy an airline ticket from an American broker then the computer needs to know who ordered the seat first otherwise there could be a risk of double-booking.

For this reason a global timescale has been developed allowing the whole world to synchronise to one timescale. This global timescale is commonly known as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and is based onthe old timescale GMT (Greenwich Meantime) although it accounts for the slowing of the Earth due to tidal and lunar forces.

UTC is kept accurate by atomic clocks that boast an accuracy of a second every 100 million years, however, atomic clocks are highly expensive to own, operate and run and are therefore impractical for a business that just wants to keep accurate UTC.

For this reason the dedicated NTP time server has been developed that can receive a transmitted time signal from an atomic clock and synchronise an entire computer network to it.

The NTP time server can receive a time signal directly from a physic laboratory using a long wave receiver or more conveniently using the GPS signals that are transmitted by satellites 30,000 km above the Earth.

By using a NTP time server a business network can be kept to within a few milliseconds of UTC (thousandth of seconds) ensuring that they can trade and do business with complete and accurate synchronisation.

Methods of keeping track of time have altered throughout history with ever increasing accuracy has being the catalyst for change.

Most methods of timekeeping have traditionally been based on the movement of the Earth around the Sun. For millennia, a day has been divided into 24 equal parts that have become known as hours. Basing our timescales on the rotation of the Earth has been adequate for most of our historical needs, however as technology advances, the need for an ever increasingly accurate timescale has been evident.

The problem with the traditional methods became apparent when the first truly accurate timepieces – the atomic clock was developed in the 1950’s. Because these timepieces  was based on the frequency of atoms and were accurate to within a second every million years it was soon discovered that our day, that we had always presumed as being precisely 24 hours, altered from day to day.

The affects of the Moon’s gravity on our oceans causes the Earth to slow and speed up during its rotation – some days are longer than 24 hours whilst others are shorter. Whilst this minute differences in the length of a day have made little difference to our daily lives it this inaccuracy has implications for many of our modern technologies such as satellite communication and global positioning.

A timescale has been developed to deal with the inaccuracies in the Earth’s spin – Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It is based on the traditional 24-hour Earth rotation known as Greenwich Meantime (GMT) but accounts for the inaccuracies in the earth’s spin by having so-called ‘Leap Seconds’ added (or subtracted).

As UTC is based on the time told by atomic clocks it is incredibly accurate and therefore has been adopted as the World’s civilian timescale and is used by business and commerce all over the globe.

Most computer networks can be synchronised to UTC by using a dedicated NTP time server.

NTP time server (Network Time Protocol) abuse is quite often unintentional and fortunately thanks to the NTP pool is less frequent than it was although incidents still happen.

NTP server abuse is any act that violates the access rules of a NTP time server or an act that damages it in any way. Public NTP servers are those servers that can be accessed from across the Internet by devices and routers to use as a timing source to synchronise a network to. Most public NTP time servers are non-profit and set up as acts of generosity, mostly by University’s or other technical centres.

For this reason access rules have to be set up as huge amounts of traffic can generate giant bandwidth bills and can lead to the NTP time server being turned off permanently. Access rules are used to prevent too much traffic from accessing stratum 1 servers, by convention stratum 1 servers should only be accessed by stratum 2 servers which in turn can pass the timing information on down the line.

However, the worst cases of NTP server abuse have been where thousands of devices have sent requests for time, where in the hierarchical nature of NTP only one is needed.

Whilst most acts of NTP abuse are intentional some of the worst abuses of NTP time servers have been committed (albeit unintentionally) by large companies. The first large firm discovered to have been guilty of NTP abuse was Netgear, who, in 2003 released four routers that were all hard coded to use the University of Wisconsin’s NTP server, the resulting DDS (Distributed Denial of Service) reached nearly 150 megabits a second.

Even now, five years on and despite the release of several patches to fix the problem and the University being compensated by Netgear the problem still continues as some people have never patched their routers.

Similar incidents have been committed by SMC and D-Link. D-Link in particular caused controversy as when the matter was drawn to their attention they decided to bring the lawyers in. Only after it was discovered that they violated nearly 50 NTP servers did they attempt resolve the problem (and only after scathing press coverage did they relent).

The easiest way to avoid such problems is to use a dedicated external stratum 1 time server. These devices are relatively inexpensive, simple to install and far more accurate and secure than online NTP servers. These devices receive the time from atomic clocks either from the GPS network (Global Positioning System).

Time synchronisation is an integral part of modern computer networking particularly with the Internet and online communication having become so dominant.

Communicating with machines across the globe requires exact time synchronisation otherwise many of the online tasks we take for granted would not be possible. Time in the form of timestamps is the only form of reference a computer has to identify the order of events. So with time sensitive transactions time synchronisation is pivotal.

Here are some tips to ensure your network is running precise and accurate time as possible:

NTP (Network Time Protocol) is the world’s leading time synchronisation software. There are other time protocols but NTP is the most widely used and best supported.

Most computer networks across the globe are synchronised to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). This is a global timescale based on the time told by atomic clocks. Always use a UTC source to synchronise too.

Always use an external hardware source as a timing reference as time sources from the Internet can not be authenticated. Authentication is a security measure used by NTP to ensure a timing reference is coming from where it says it is from. Also using an Internet timing source means that the reference is outside your networks firewall, this can cause added security risks.

Dedicated time servers can receive UTC signals from radio transmissions and the GPS network. These offer the most secure, accurate and reliable method of receiving a UTC time reference.

Networks based in Britain, Germany, the USA and Japan have access to long-wave time and frequency transmissions that are broadcast by national physics labs. These broadcasts are accurate and reliable and often the dedicated time servers that receive them are less expensive than their GPS alternatives.

GPS is available everywhere on the globe as a source of UTC time. GPS antennas do good a good 180 degree view of the sky and require a good 48 hours to receive a stable ‘locked’ satellite fix.

Arrange your network into strata. Stratum levels signify the distance from a timing source. A stratum 0 server is an atomic clock while a stratum 1 server is a dedicated time server that receives the time from a stratum 0 source. Stratum 2 devices are machines that receive their timing source from a stratum 1 server but stratum 2 devices can also be used to pass on timing information. By ensuring you have enough stratum levels you will avoid congestion in your network and time server.

In selecting a NTP time server it is important to think about where the device will be located and which timing reference would be most suitable for the applications it is required for. There are benefits and drawbacks to both the radio broadcasts and the GPS timing signals.

Unfortunately not every country transmits a national time and frequency broadcast so if a time server is to be located outside of the US, Germany, UK, France or Japan it may be doubtful that a signal could be received (although many of the these transmissions can be received in neighbouring countries).

Radio signals are also easily susceptible to atmospheric interference and can be blocked by mountains, sky-scrapers or other topography.

GPS on the other hand can be received literally anywhere on the planet. GPS is also a more accurate means of receiving a time code -  a typical GPS receiver can provide timing information to within a few nanoseconds of UTC (a nanosecond is a 1 billionth of a second) while national time and frequency transmissions are accurate to only 1 – 20 milliseconds (a millisecond is 1/1000 of a second).

However, one benefit of using a radio broadcast as a timing reference is that it is possible to receive the transmission from inside a building (although basements and rooms with lots of metal furnishings can cause problems), while a GPS antenna needs to be situated on the roof of a building and have a good view of the sky to be able to find and receive the signal broadcast from the satellites (although it is possible to receive a signal through a window depending on the topography outside).

NTP time servers are devices that distribute a single time source amongst a computer network to ensure that all machines and devices are synchronised to the same time.

Most time servers use the protocol NTP (Network Time Protocol) which distributes a single time source across the network.  Most time servers receive a UTC time source (coordinated universal time) which is a global timescale based on the time told by atomic clocks.

An inaccurate time stamp, or a computer network that is not synchronised will lead to all sorts of problems including failing of time sensitive applications, emails arriving before they have been sent and even leaving a system open to fraud.

A time server is therefore an essential piece of hardware as it is the only means of keeping a computer network running accurate and synchronised time.

There are two methods in which a NTP time server can receive a secure and accurate UTC time source.  The first is via specialist national time and frequency transmission broadcast in long-wave  by several national physics laboratories such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the US who broadcast the WWVB radio time signal or NPL (National Physical Laboratory) in the UK who broadcast the MSF time signal.

The second method is to use the signal from the GPS network (Global Positioning System). All GPS satellites transmit a timing signal from their onboard atomic clocks, it is this signal that is utilised by satellite navigation devices and can be received by GPS time servers as a timing reference.

Dedicated NTP time servers are therefore either designed to receive the radio signal or the GPS network, although some high quality devices are duel systems, designed to receive both GPS and radio to ensure more accurate synchronisation, reliability and are more failsafe in case one signal fails.

In selecting a NTP time server the things to think about  are where the device will be located and which timing reference would be most suitable for the applications it is required for. There are benefits and drawbacks to both the radio broadcasts and the GPS timing signals that are commonly used in these servers.

Not every country transmits a national time and frequency broadcast which means if a time server is to be located outside of the US, Japan, Germany, the UK or France it is doubtful that a signal  will be received (although some of these broadcasts can be received in neighbouring states).

The radio frequency is also susceptible to atmospheric interference and can be blocked by local topography.

GPS on the other hand can be received anywhere in the world it is also slightly  more accurate – a typical GPS receiver can provide timing information to within a few nanoseconds of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) while national time and frequency broadcasts are accurate to 1 – 20 milliseconds.

However, using a radio broadcast as a timing reference is that it is possible to receive it from inside a building (although basements and rooms with metal furnishings can cause interference). The drawback of GPS is that the antenna needs to be situated on the roof to have a clear view of the sky to be able to find and receive the signal broadcast from the satellites (although it is possible sometimes to receive a signal through window).