Actually, NTP is architected to minimize this problem. If you can get past the technical stuff, there's an excellent explanation of the theory at:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp.html David Mills, who developed the protocol, is more than a little obsessed. Part of the benefit is that the various servers maintain sync with each other, and with baseline (stratum 0) atomic clocks. If latency is an issue, you can just pick a server nearby. It isn't usually necessary though, because syncing to either NIST or the public ntp "pool" supposedly "provides accuracies generally in the range of a millisecond or two in LANs and up to a few tens of milliseconds in global WANs." > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin > Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 1:20 PM > To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: [IBM-MAIN] Time Synchronization Latency > > > In a recent note, Curt Thompson said: > > > Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 09:40:27 -0500 > > > > companies are building-out locations that are further apart > in distances, > > the latency may prove unacceptable. An example where this > may be important > > is during troubleshooting, where review of logs, etc maybe > necessary. If > > timestamps aren't tightly-coupled, it becomes more > difficult to piece > > together the picture that led up to an issue. > > > But remember the Special Theory of Relativity: If no two systems > are out-of-sync by more than the speed-of-light delay between > them, there can be no problem to "piece together" the picture in > the logs, because no event on either system can have any effect on > the other in less time than that. The very latency that affects > syncronizing the clocks equally affects the phenomena you're > studying, thus alleviating the ambiguity. > > -- gil > -- > StorageTek > INFORMATION made POWERFUL > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > -------------------------------------------------------- If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, please notify the sender, delete it and do not read, act upon, print, disclose, copy, retain or redistribute it. Click here for important additional terms relating to this e-mail. http://www.ml.com/email_terms/ -------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
