Windows Time Server - Synchronising Your Network With Ntp

Nearly all a computer's activity involves time whether logging a timestamp for when a network was accessed to sending an email, knowing the time is crucial for computer applications.

All computers have an on-board clock that provides time and date information. These Real Time Clock (Rtc) chips are battery backed so that even when off they can verbalize time, however these Rtc chips are mass produced and cannot verbalize strict time and tend to drift.

Windows 2008 Networking

For many applications this can be quite adequate, however if a computer is on a network and needs to talk to other machines, failing to be synchonised to the strict time can mean many time-sensitive transactions can not be completed and can even leave the network open to safety threats.

All versions of Windows Server since 2000 have included a time synchronization facility, called Windows Time service (w32time.exe), built into the operating system. This can be configured to control as a network time server synchronizing all machines to a definite time source.

Windows Time service uses a version of Ntp (Network Time Protocol), ordinarily a simplified version, of the Internet protocol which is designed to synchronise machines on a network, Ntp is also the suitable for which most computer networks over the global use to synchronise with.

Choosing the strict time source is vitally important. Most networks are synchronized to Utc (Coordinated Universal Time) source. Utc is a global standardized time based on atomic clocks which are the most strict time sources.

Utc can be obtained over the Internet from such places as time.nist.gov (us Naval Observatory) or time.windows.com (Microsoft) but it must be noted that internet time sources can not be authenticated which can leave a principles open to abuse and Microsoft and others recommend using an external hardware source as a reference clock such as a specialized Ntp server.

Ntp servers receive their time source from whether a master radio transmission from national physics laboratories which broadcast Utc time taken from an atomic clock source or by the Gps network which also relays Utc as a consequence of needing it to pin point locations.

Ntp can verbalize time over the group Internet to within 1/100th of a second (10 milliseconds) and can achieve even better over Lans.

Windows Time Server - Synchronising Your Network With Ntp