Free Clock Democratizes Atomic Accuracy

schliz writes "A new, trial network of software-based clocks could give data centers and networks the accuracy of an atomic clock for free. The so-called RADclock analyses information from multiple computers across the internet by collecting the time from each machine's internal quartz clock, the time it takes for this information to be transmitted across the network, and comparing all the information collected to determine a time that is most likely to be accurate, so machines are calibrated across the network with up to microsecond accuracy — as good as that provided by a $50,000 atomic clock, researchers say."

Comments

A solution in need of a problem?

[iserlohn]

NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.

The only problem this will solve is where it is a private network not connected to public NTP servers (or organizations that do not trust public NTP). In that case, they would most likely be able to afford a atomic clock.

Re:A solution in need of a problem?

[David Chappell]

NTP solved this ages ago by distributing atomic clock accuracy through the network.

The only problem this will solve is where it is a private network not connected to public NTP servers (or organizations that do not trust public NTP). In that case, they would most likely be able to afford a atomic clock.

If one reads the explanation at the beginning of the article literally (as the person who wrote the summary did), the article does seem to say that this system averages the time from the cheap quartz crystal clocks in all of the computers in order to arrive at a highly accurate estimate of the true time of day. This of course is absurd. If all of the clocks start out between one and five minutes fast, they will converge on a time that is about three minutes fast. So much for microsecond accuracy!

The article suggests that NTP did indeed solve this problem. Reading between the lines I gather that these researchers are developing the next generation protocol to replace NTP. This will allow all of the nodes to synchronize more tightly with whatever time source (such as an atomic clock) is used.