Versatile network time servers are often needed to meet the requirements for demanding, high performance network time synchronization as well as supply traditional time and frequency technology. The SyncServer® S350™ provides unsurpassed NTP performance for the IT network while being the most versatile time server in the world for traditional time and frequency applications.

When it comes to synchronizing the time on servers and workstations for large or expanding IT enterprises the S350 sets new standards for security, accuracy, reliability, redundancy and versatility in network time servers.

NTP AND THE HAPPENED-BEFORE RELATION
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a UDP protocol for IP Networks. It was designed to synchronize the clock on client machines with the clock on network time servers. The beauty of NTP is that it is a tiered time distribution system with redundancy capability. NTP measures delays within the network and within the algorithms on the machine on which it is running.

This makes it possible to synchronize clocks to within milliseconds of each other when connected on a Local Area Network and within hundreds of milliseconds of each other when connected to a Wide Area Network. The reason that it works so well is because of the “happened-before” relation.

A gentleman by the name of Leslie Lamport formulated the happened-before relation, which is a means of ordering events based on the causal relationship of two events in asynchronous distributed systems. Lamport showed it is possible to synchronize all the clocks to produce a single, unambiguous time standard and he pointed out the clock synchronization need not be absolute. What matters is not that all processes agree on exactly what time it is, but rather, that they agree on the order in which events occur.