Installing a GPS Time Server for Network Synchronisation

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As the name suggests, GPS time servers receive their time from the GPS system (Global Positioning System). The GPS signal is basically just a time code sent down from the satellites’ onboard atomic clocks. This time signal is what satellite navigation systems use to triangulate positioning, but because it is generated by atomic clocks is extremely accurate and precise.

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Understanding your Network Time Server

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Network time servers are responsible for providing a network’s time. Of course, all computers have their own onboard clocks built into the motherboards, but these devices are only cheap oscillators and are prone to drift. When you have a network of hundreds or even thousands of PCs and devices, if there was no synchronisation to a single network time source, all the machines could be relaying completely different times, often several minutes apart.

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Keeping Time with Network Time Protocol

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When it comes to network time synchronisation, Network Time Protocol (NTP) is by far the most widely used software protocol. Whether it’s for keeping a network of hundreds or thousands of machines synchronised, or keeping a single machine running true, NTP offers the solution. Without NTP, and the NTP server, many of the tasks we perform on the internet, from shopping to online banking, simply wouldn’t be possible.

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Using GPS for Accurate and Secure Time for any Network

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Perhaps the safest and most accurate means of obtaining a time source is by utilising the time codes transmitted by the GPS (Global Positioning System). All that is required for picking up these GPS signals is a GPS NTP server, which will not only receive the time code, but also distribute it around the network, check for drift and maintain stable and precise time on all machines.

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Receiving GPS Time for Network Synchronisation

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To synchronise a computer network or other technology systems to GPS time, all that is required is a GPS network time server. GPS network time servers are simple to install, simple to use and can maintain accuracy for all sorts of technologies. Used by organisations as diverse as stock exchanges, air traffic control and banking systems, GPS time servers provide an efficient and cost effective solution to maintain network synchronicity.

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The Cost of Inaccurate Network Time

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When a network loses time, you are at risk of losing far more than just what time of day it is. Time is an essential aspect of network security and any errors in a network time server can lead to catastrophic result. However, the solution for ensuring network security is fairly simple and relatively inexpensive – the NTP time server.

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The Greenwich Time Lady

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Time synchronisation is something easily taken for granted in this day and age. With GPS NTP servers, satellites beam down time to technologies, which keeps them synced to the world’s time standard UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

Before UTC, before atomic clocks, before GPS, keeping time synchronised was not so easy. Throughout history, humans have always kept track of time, but accuracy was never that important. A few minutes or an hour or so difference, made little difference to people’s lives throughout the medieval and regency periods; however, come the industrial revolution and the development of railways, factories and international commerce, accurate timekeeping became crucial.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) became time standard in 1880, taking over from the world’s first time standard railway time, developed to ensure accuracy with railway timetables. Soon, all businesses, shops and offices wanted to keep their clocks accurate to GMT, but in an age before electrical clocks and telephones, this proved difficult.

Enter the Greenwich Time Lady. Ruth Belville was a businesswoman from Greenwich, who followed in her father’s footsteps in delivering time to businesses throughout London. The Belville’s owned a highly accurate and expensive pocket watch, a John Arnold chronometer originally made for the Duke of Sussex.

Every week, Ruth, and her father before her, would take the train to Greenwich where they would synchronise the pocket watch to Greenwich Mean Time. The Belvilles would then travel around London, charging businesses to adjust their clocks their chronometer, a business enterprise that lasted from 1836 to 1940 when Ruth finally retired at the age of 86.

BY this time, electronic clocks had began to take over traditional mechanical devices and were more accurate, needing less synchronisation, and with the telephone speaking clock introduced by the General Post Office (GPO) in 1936, timekeeping services like the Belville’s became obsolete.

Today, time synchronisation is far more accurate. Network time servers, often using the computer protocol NTP (Network Time Protocol), keep computer networks and modern technologies true. NTP time servers receive an accurate atomic clock time signal, often by GPS, and distribute the time around the network. Thanks to atomic clocks, NTP time servers and the universal timescale UTC, modern computers can keep time to within a few milliseconds of each other.

 

Keeping Track of Time Zones

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Despite the use of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) as the world’s timescale, time zones, the regional areas with a uniform time, are still an important aspect of our daily lives. Time zones provide areas with a synchronised time that helps commerce, trade and society function, and allow all nations to enjoy noon at lunchtime. Most of us who have ever gone abroad are all aware of the differences in time zones and the need to reset our watches.

Time zones around the world

Keeping track of time zones can be really tricky. Different nations not only use different times but also use different adjustments for daylight saving, which can make keeping track of time zones difficult. Furthermore, nations occasionally move time zone, normally due to economic and trade reasons, which provides even more difficulties in keeping track of time zones.

You may think that modern computers can automatically account for time zones due to the settings in the clock program; however, most computer systems rely on a database, which is continuously updated, to provide accurate time zone information.

The Time Zone Database, sometimes called the Olson database after its long-time coordinator, Arthur David Olson, has recently moved home due to legal wrangling, which temporarily caused the database to cease functioning, causing untold problems for people needing accurate time zone information. Without the time zone database, time zones had to be calculated manually, for travelling, scheduling meetings and booking flights.

The Internet’s address system, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has taken over the database to provide stability, due to the reliance on the database by computer operating systems and other technologies; the database is used by a range of computer operating systems including Apple Inc’s Mac OS X, Oracle Corp, Unix and Linux, but not Microsoft Corp’s Windows.

The Time Zone Database provides a simple method of setting the time on a computer, enabling cities to be selected, with the database providing the right time. The database has all the necessary information, such as daylight saving times and the latest time zone movements, to provide accuracy and a reliable source of information.

Or course, a synchronised computer networks using NTP doesn’t require the Time Zone Database. Using the standard international timescale, UTC, NTP servers maintain the exact same time, no matter where the computer network is in the world, with the time zone information calculated as a difference to UTC.