[time-nuts] Re: What everyday uses are there for accurate clocks?

[Dr. David Kirkby]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 at 13:15, Hugh Blemings <hugh at blemings.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm sure others can speak in more depth than I, but birtually all major
> cloud providers and/or services that make use of large datacentres
> (think Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc. if you want publicly aware
> examples) - will run their own NTP servers or other similar time
> standards to ensure their geographically dispersed systems have a shared
> understanding of what the time is.


>
> This is crucial for things as mundane as consistent end user experience
> (who posted first?) to ensuring network security.
>
> Cheers,
> Hugh


I can’t see how knowing who posted what first on Facebook, Instagram etc
affects the user experience, when differences in time are any less than a
second. So I am not convinced that timenut-grade oscillators are needed for
that purpose!  I don’t know if accurate timing is important for network
security.

As far as I am aware, of the 7 base SI units (metre, second, kelvin,
candela, ampere, kilogram and mole), the second is the only SI base unit
where low uncertainty is important to a large number of people. The
instances where it is important seem to be limited to

* Navigation systems (eg GPS)
* Telecommunications
* Financial transactions.

Sure, timing is important for radio astronomy as someone mentioned, but
that doesn’t have any practical impact to many people.

Dave
-- 
Dr. David Kirkby,
Kirkby Microwave Ltd,
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