Chicago sang:

[ceagle]

"Does anybody really know what time it is?"

Well... have you seen http://liveclock.com/ ?
It always seems to be identical to the sync on my computer clock... which has led me to believe that both are synchronized up with the big daddy of time servers somewhere... and thus, accurate (effectively at least).

After my recent experiment with timepieces, uh, I got one of those Casio satellite watches (not terribly expensive these days :> )... and it arrived today.

But... after IT does its sync, it seems to be about 23 seconds slower than the online live clock! 8| *boggle*

Then again, *this* site ( http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java ) does seem to sync up exactly with the little watch. So is the site Microsoft syncs its clock up with... always 23 seconds fast?

We used to have at least two methods of getting what was thought to be rather accurate time... the phone service (discontinued here), and shortwave radio. Do I need to fire up my old shortwave radio to check these out? rarrgh.

Thoughts and info welcomed.

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

The caveat on w32tm is that it's an ntp server daemon err, service, so some cognitive thought is required to set it up properly so it can provide the correct time to all the Win boxes on your network.

If you hare in a Windows domain, you should NOT run w32tm on a client PC, things will get confused :D

CYa!
Mako

[atkelar.livejournal.com]

I semi-agree :) If you're in an Active Directory domain, you should sync your time with the domain controllers - wich is what w32tm does on my machine, according to the status display. Cerberos relies on a somewhat synchronized time between the machines so the authentication tickets can be validated. I don't know the default tolerance window for newer Windows versions but with Windows 2003 the default tolerance was five minutes(!) which should be fine even for PCs without a working time synchronization. Which is why nobody notices anything wrong with the domain time sync until it's gone for a looooong time :P