| By Richard N Williams
Maintaining accurate and synchronised time has never been so important for businesses and organisations. In today’s world, where so many transactions take place online, having a synchronised and accurate network time is crucial for businesses, especially those organisations that conduct their business over the internet or with other computer networks.
| By Daniel Waldron
The accuracy of modern Olympic timing is made possible with the use of high quality timing devices, accurate synchronisation and atomic timing. Regular quartz oscillators are fairly accurate, but they still drift, which means without regular synchronisation, their accuracy would falter UY98UZDDVGGJ . To ensure all timing devices can achieve millisecond accuracy and precise synchronisation with one another, all Olympic timing devices are synchronised with GPS atomic clocks several times a day.
| By Richard N Williams
A GPS time server is ideal for preventing costly leap seconds that interrupt businesses that operate on a global timescale.
| By Richard N Williams
For computer networks, accurate time is essential for preventing errors, fraud and ensures security. Everything from internet banking to air traffic control relies on precise and accurate time, but many organisations take unnecessary risks when it comes to the time on their networks and rely on online time servers instead of a dedicated NTP server
| By Richard N Williams
NTP GPS time servers are becoming an essential tool for business networks. With the ability to synchronise hundreds of computer, switches and routers, an NTP GPS time server can keep a network accurate to within a few milliseconds of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
| By Richard N Williams
To keep precise time, computer networks have to find a source of accurate, precise and secure time, which enables all devices to be synchronised together. One of the most common used devices for achieving this are radio time synchronisation receivers.
| By Richard N Williams
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.
| By Richard N Williams
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.
| By Richard N Williams
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.
| By Richard N Williams
Ask anybody what the key to network timing is and you will probably get the response NTP (Network Time Protocol). NTP is a protocol that distributes and checks the time on all network devices to a reference clock – and it is this reference which is the true key to network time synchronisation.
Whilst a version of NTP is easy to obtain – it is normally installed on most operating systems, or is otherwise free to download – but getting a source of time is where the true key to network time synchronisation lies.
Atomic clocks govern the global timescale UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and it is this timescale that is best for network timing as synchronising all devices on a network to UTC is equivalent of having you network synchronised with every other UTC synced network on Earth.
So getting a source of UTC time is the true key to accurate network time synchronisation, so what are the options?
Internet Time Sources
The obvious choice for most NTP users, but internet time suffers from two major flaws; firstly, internet time operates through the firewall and is therefore fraught with security risks – if the time can get through your firewall, then other things can too. Secondly, internet time sources can be hit and miss with their accuracy.
Due to the fact most internet time sources are stratum 2 devices (they connect to another device that receives the UTC source time) and the distance from client to host can never be truly ascertained or accounted for – it can make them inaccurate – with some internet time sources minutes, hours and even days away from true UTC time.
Radio Referenced Time Server
Another source of UTC time which doesn’t suffer from either security or accuracy flaws is receiving the time from long wave radio signals that some country’s national physics laboratories broadcast. While these signals are available throughout the USA (courtesy of NIST) the UK (NPL) and several other European countries and can be picked up witha basic radio referenced NTP server they are not available everywhere and the signals can be difficult to receive in some urban locations or anywhere where there is electrical interference.
GPS-timing
For completely accurate, secure and a reliable source of UTC time there is no substitute for GPS time. GPS timing signals are beamed directly from atomic clocks onboard the GPS satellites (Global Positioning System) and received by GPS NTP time servers. These can then distribute the atomic clock time around the network.
GPS timing sources are accurate, secure and available literally anywhere on the planet 24 hours a day.
NTS-6001-GPS
C1 44-R-M-NTP - PoE digital wall clock
NTS-4000-GPS-R - A complete solution for synchronising the time across any computer network.