Choosing a Time Source what to do and what not to do
Time synchronization is crucial for many of the applications that we do across the internet these days; internet banking, online reservation and even online auctions all require network time synchronization.
Failing to ensure their servers are adequately synchronized would mean many of these applications would be impossible to achieve; seat reservations could be sold more than once, lower bids could win internet auctions and it would be possible to withdraw you life savings from the bank twice if they didn’t have adequate synchronization (good for you not for the bank).
Even computer networks that on the face of it do not rely on time sensitive transactions also need to be adequately synchronized as it could be near impossible to track down errors or protect the system from malicious attacks if the timestamps on differ on various machines on the network.
Many organisations opt to use internet time servers as a source of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) – the atomic clock controlled global timescale. Although there are many security issues in doing so such as leaving a hole in the firewall to communicate with the time server and not having any authentication for the time synchronization protocol NTP (Network Time Protocol).
However, in saying that many network administrators still opt to use online time servers as a UTC source regardless of the security implications although there are other issues that administrators should be aware of. On the internet there are two types of time server – stratum 1 and stratum 2. Stratum 1 servers receive a time signal direct from an atomic clock while stratum 2 servers receive a time signal from a stratum 1 server. Most internet stratum 1 servers are closed – unavailable to most administrators and there can be some shortfall in accuracy in using a stratum 2 server.
For the most accurate, secure and precise timing information external NTP time servers are the best option as these are stratum 1 devices that can synchronize hundreds of machines on a network to the exact same UTC time.
