Clock synchronization

Clock synchronization is a topic in computer science and engineering that aims to coordinate otherwise independent clocks. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift, caused by clocks counting time at slightly different rates. There are several problems that occur as a result of clock rate differences and several solutions, some being more appropriate than others in certain contexts. Clock synchronization is a topic in computer science and engineering that aims to coordinate otherwise independent clocks. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift, caused by clocks counting time at slightly different rates. There are several problems that occur as a result of clock rate differences and several solutions, some being more appropriate than others in certain contexts. In serial communication, clock synchronization can refer to clock recovery which achieves frequency synchronization, as opposed to full phase synchronization. Such clock synchronization is used in synchronization in telecommunications and automatic baud rate detection. Plesiochronous or isochronous operation refers to a system with frequency synchronization and loose constraints on phase synchronization. Synchronous operation implies a tighter synchronization based on time perhaps in addition to frequency. As a result of the difficulties managing time at smaller scale, there are problems associated with clock skew that take on more complexity in distributed computing in which several computers will need to realize the same global time. For instance, in Unix systems the make command is used to compile new or modified code and seeks to avoid recompiling unchanged code. The make command uses the clock of the machine it runs on to determine which source files need to be recompiled. If the sources reside on a separate file server and the two machines have unsynchronized clocks, the make program might not produce the correct results. In a system with central server, the synchronization solution is trivial; the server will dictate the system time. Cristian's algorithm and the Berkeley algorithm are potential solutions to the clock synchronization problem in this environment. In a distributed system the problem takes on more complexity because a global time is not easily known. The most used clock synchronization solution on the Internet is the Network Time Protocol (NTP) which is a layered client-server architecture based on UDP message passing. Lamport timestamps and vector clocks are concepts of the logical clock in distributed systems. In a wireless network, the problem becomes even more challenging due to the possibility of collision of the synchronization packets on the wireless medium and the higher drift rate of clocks on the low-cost wireless devices. The Berkeley algorithm is suitable for systems where a radio clock is not present, this system has no way of making sure of the actual time other than by maintaining a global average time as the global time. A time server will periodically fetch the time from all the time clients, average the results, and then report back to the clients the adjustment that needs be made to their local clocks to achieve the average. This algorithm highlights the fact that internal clocks may vary not only in the time they contain but also in the clock rate.