KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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NISTs Internet Time Service Serves the World

Posted: 13 Mar 2016 11:05 AM PDT
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This is a press release that I recently received from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Communications has always
relied on the precise measurement of time. Today, JT65 is one mode that
relies on accurate time synchronization. Thats why its important to know
something about time, and how we keep on time today.Dan

The Internet Time Service operated by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) serves much of the Earth, with customers from around
the globe. In one month of study alone, just two of the 20 NIST servers
that supply time information to Internet-connected devices received
requests from 316 million unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses,
according to detailed data about the service published for the first time.
This represents at least 8.5 percent of devices on the entire Internet.

“NIST should be very proud of the Internet Time Service, which is an
important public resource,” says NIST physicist Jeff Sherman, who collected
the statistics and co-authored the new report. (The study focused on just
two servers because they are local to NIST and easy to access, and they
carry 25 percent of the total traffic, a statistically representative
sample.)

NIST has operated the Internet Time Service since 1993. The service
receives about 16 billion requests per day (as of January 2016). The 20
timeservers are located at 12 sites around the country, including NIST
campuses in Gaithersburg, Md., and Boulder, Colo. The servers are linked to
the NIST time scale, an ensemble of atomic clocks that maintain the U.S.
version of Coordinated Universal Time. The time scale is calibrated by the
NIST-F1 and NIST-F2 cesium fountain atomic clocks, the U.S. civilian time
standards.

Importantly, the Internet Time Service provides a reliable source of time
independent of the satellite-based Global Positioning System. Demand may
increase with the growth of the Internet of Things, in which more devices
will be connected to the Internet without any direct human intervention.

NIST Fellow Judah Levine came up with the original idea of distributing
time over the Internet and wrote most of the software. The service is just
one of the ways NIST distributes time-of-day information. Other methods
include NIST radio stations, telephone call-in services, and the website
http://time.gov.



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