Legally Traceable Time

Protect your network and applications against legal risks with accurate time

Time, as measured by the second, is one of the seven legally defined units of measure. National Metrology Institutes, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States, maintain official time using extremely accurate atomic clocks. NIST time is traceable to the worldwide time standard known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Time synchronization to UTC is required to validate time for legally traceable records. It also ensures the interoperability with systems on different networks in various locations.

Official Time Diagram

The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides a cost-effective way to provide legally traceable time. The GPS system includes 24 satellites carrying onboard atomic clocks. The US Naval Observatory monitors the satellite's clocks and locks them to UTC for accuracy and traceability to national and international standards. Simply install a GPS antenna and connect it to a GPS-enabled time server such as Spectracom's GPS-enabled NetClock® master clock. A NetClock time server can be used to synchronize network devices via NTP. Other outputs such as serial ASCII time codes, alarms, event relays, and add-on radio transmitters, to synchronize wireless clocks, are used to provide legally traceable time to other time-sensitive devices.

Benefits of synchronizing to legally traceable time:

• Accurate time is fully automated, eliminating error-prone manual setting.
• Your network is protected against hacking, intrusion fraud and commercial disputes.
• Fault diagnosis and file and network restoration is possible.
• Your regulatory compliance and security policy programs are supported.
• The network is interoperable and operates efficiently.

Click here for additional information.