From the games of our youth to the iPhones of today, time has been an ever present part of our lives.  We base our schedules around the accuracy, or at least the consistency, of the clocks whose paths we cross each day.  A small change in the accuracy of any single clock, say, the alarm clock next to your bed, can impact the execution of a tightly packed schedule, setting the entire day askew.

The importance of accurate time in your network is even more critical.  Whether it is your Windows domain controllers needing accuracy for the Kerberos network authentication or consistency between your network devices for troubleshooting, the answer is still the same -- Network Time Protocol.

Network Time Protocol, or NTP, comes in two different flavours -- NTP or SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol).  SNTP is used to maintain time for end-point resources, usually client machines.  NTP keeps the global network infrastructure (aka the internet), as well as your critical servers and infrastructure, in sync.  Though the underlying theory is the same between SNTP and NTP, the later is capable of more finite time management making is more appropriate for situations of critical time-keeping.

NTP sources at stratum level 0 are typically maintained by government or academic institutions with access to nuclear clocks or similarly accurate time keeping devices.  Stratum 1 are the servers directly attached to the stratum 0 sources and are not typically directly accessible from the internet.  Stratum 2 servers can be publicly accessible and comprise most of the servers in the popular ntp.org pool servers.  The NTP pool servers, in the case of Canada 0.ca.pool.ntp.org through 3.ca.pool.ntp.org, are two strata removed from the actual time sources, though NTP compensates for the time variation caused by networks by calculating delay, offset and dispersion.

Devices on your network, whether an actual NTP server at stratum 3, or higher, or an SNTP synched client, will benefit from being synchronized to via the global time standards.  From email to databases, to the simple act of logging on to your network, synchronized time is essential to the consistent performance of your network.  Thankfully every client and server OS comes with either NTP or SNTP installed “out of the box”.  Windows clients, by default, synchronize via SNTP with time.windows.com keeping your email, databases and, hopefully, even you, on-time.  So, next time you are asked, "What time is it, Mr. Wolf?" you can answer with confidence knowing that your time is the correct time thanks to NTP.

If you have concerns about time synchronization on your network or want to discuss ways to ensure that your physically distributed network is kept ‘on time’, please contact Bulletproof Solutions at 506-452-8558 or 1-877-274-2349 and ask to speak to one of our sales staff.