Re: Predictable Internet Time

Joe Touch <touch@isi.edu> Tue, 03 January 2017 06:12 UTC

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Subject: Re: Predictable Internet Time
To: Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@hallambaker.com>, sandy@weijax.net
References: <CAMm+LwgfQJ8aG5wB=d3fRbbeje3J9o7Z4_DCuP8DL88ouDeKzw@mail.gmail.com> <504e2cea0d1668c31486b05fec0a967a4446aefe@webmail.weijax.net> <CAMm+Lwi_jU6gjdtdM6a2n_9_89tUvWBNXxnMtSjTEA++h1D4Ew@mail.gmail.com>
From: Joe Touch <touch@isi.edu>
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Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:11:26 -0800
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On 1/1/2017 11:24 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> To have a complete solution, the way forward would be to require
> systems using PIT to use the 'time smear' approach that has been
> pioneered by Akamai and is now used by Amazon, Google, etc. albeit in
> slightly different and non standard ways.
>
> Using time smearing, a program will never emit the time value 12:59:60
> as demanded by the standard. Instead the leap second is added to the
> machine gradually over the course of 20 or 24 hours. This avoids the
> need to emit a time value that could cause a system to fail at the
> cost of a modest difference between the purported and actual value.

Smearing leads to differing interpretations of elapsed time for two reasons:

1) smearing isn't unambiguously specified
2) smearing doesn't match the clock standards set by the ITU (who
defines UTC)

A "complete" solution would have several properties:

- it would always indicate the correct UTC time
- it would calculate time differences accurately

There's no clear reason why that solution can't be split into parts,
e.g., using Unix time to calculate time differences and a (complex)
converter to deal with UTC leap seconds.

Joe