Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. As we’ve seen in previous posts, PTP has many optional features, and often more than one way to do things. This is what gives PTP its awesome flexibility to cover so many different kinds of applications. There is however a dirty secret behind this power: PTP […]
NTP vs PTP: Network Timing Smackdown!
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. I get asked a lot of questions from customers about network timing technology. Some of them are challenging to answer. However, one that I get all the time that is easy to answer is this: “Do I want NTP or PTP?” It all comes down to […]
What Makes a Master the Best?
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. This is a very brief introduction to the Best Master Clock Algorithm. For a more detailed description refer to the more detailed post: BMCA Deep Dive. A key to the resiliency of the Precise Time Protocol is the Best Master Clock Algorithm, or BMCA. The BMCA […]
One-step or Two-step?
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. One-step or two-step clocks for IEEE 1588? This is a question I hear a lot. If you are designing PTP enabled equipment, then it is a question, which has important ramifications for the architecture of your device. However, if you are buying PTP enabled equipment and […]
What Are All Of These IEEE 1588 Clock Types?
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. If you are new to the exciting world of IEEE 1588, or even if you are not, you might find yourself confused by all of the different types of clocks. I’ve heard and seen the following terms used related to PTP:
Tales from the ISPCS Plugfest
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. I recently got back from the ISPCS Plugfest. If you don’t know what this is, 33 organizations came together for three days in Lemgo, Germany to test interoperability of their IEEE 1588 enabled equipment. The annual event is part of the International Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization […]
End-to-End Versus Peer-to-Peer
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold. Which delay measurement mechanism is best for deploying IEEE 1588? Since I’m an engineer, the answer is, of course, it depends. The short answer is that the peer-to-peer delay measurement mechanism is best in an engineered network, where all switches (and routers if there are […]
Why is IEEE 1588 so accurate?
Five Minute Facts About Packet Timing By Doug Arnold Why is IEEE 1588 so accurate? Two words: Hardware timestamping. That’s it, really! Let me explain. The Precision Time Protocol, PTP, defined by IEEE 1588-2008 works by exchanging messages between master clocks and slave clocks.