One of the most interesting things we saw in the proposed IEEE 1588 enterprise profile was a bold suggestion on fault tolerance that looked familiar. Here’s FSMLabs press release from September 2011 TimeKeeper 5.0 offers the ability to monitor multiple
Smart and dumb clients and the “so-called” Best Master Clock Algorithm in PTP IEEE 1588
The Best Master Clock (BMC) algorithm is a key part and key weakness of the PTP standard. The proposed enterprise profile for PTP calls it “the so-called ‘best master clock’” algorithm because it doesn’t actually pick the best master clock
Challenges upgrading time synchronization in a global financial company
The real-world challenges of trying to upgrade time-synchronization without TimeKeeper are described in an excellent 2012 technical paper about a project at the company IMC Global Finance [IMC]. The article documents a two year, highly resourced project run by an
Time Synchronization in the Cloud
Synchronizing clocks in the cloud, especially for virtual machines, is way beyond the capabilities of ordinary synchronization methods. Tests show that virtual machines in the cloud relying on NTPd can fall off the reference time by tens of minutes over
Mitre and GPS spoofing
Some slides on GPS timing vulnerabilities.
The business case for being time protocol agnostic.
Time Synchronization and Distribution is a business critical issue but it is easy to become bogged down in arcane technology/marketing controversies. One of those controversies is over the choice between low level network protocols used to deliver time to application
Challenges deploying PTPv2 in a Global Financial company
Interesting article – most of these problems and more were solved in TimeKeeper years ago. But the most interesting part is the enormous engineering effort required to kind of get PTP to work.