ITC copped out on UTC again

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

If we are ever going to get a handle on Internet time we need to get rid of
the arbitrary correction factors introduced by leap seconds.

The problems caused by leap seconds are that they make it impossible for
two machines to know if they are referring to the same point in future time
and quite often introduce errors in the present.

1) No machine can determine the number of seconds between two arbitrary UTC
dates in the future since there may be a leap second announced.

2) If Machine A is attempting to synchronize with machine B on a future
point in time, they cannot do so unless they know that they have the same
view of leap seconds. If a leap second is announced and only one makes the
correction, an error is introduced.

3) In practice computer systems rarely apply leap seconds at the correct
time in any case. There is thus a jitter introduced around the introduction
of leap seconds as different machines get an NTP fix at different points in
time.

4) Even though it is possible to represent leap seconds correctly in
standard formats, doing so is almost certain to exercise code paths that
should be avoided.


Since the ITU does not look like sorting this out, I suggest we do so in
the IETF. There is no functional reason that Internet protocols should need
leap seconds.

I suggest that the IETF plan to move to Internet Time in 2015, immediately
after the next ITU meeting. Internet time would be TAI plus the number of
leap seconds that have accumulated up to the next ITU decision point. So if
UTC drops leap seconds at the next meeting the two series will be in sync,
otherwise there will be a divergence.



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Website: http://hallambaker.com/