The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time | The New Yorker

I’m very familiar with NTP, the Network Time Protocol. In fact, I remember setting up some Unix machines in the mid-90's before NTP was just installed automatically and going through the effort to determine which "strata" of time server I should synchronize with, and how to adjust and manage the local drift of my machines clock. It turns out NTP, and the fact that systems can assume they have a very nearly perfect time, is really important for so many applications. And NTP has done that job for decades.

Now, when I see the New Yorker is writing about Network Time Protocol it raised my interest. This is not glamorous stuff, but the background of the author and the software is a fun read.

N.T.P. works by telling computers to send tiny, time-stamped messages to time-checking devices superior to them in a hierarchy. The hierarchy’s uppermost layer consists of servers that are closely connected to highly accurate clocks kept in tight synchronization with Coördinated Universal Time. The time then trickles, from strata to strata, to the machines at the bottom of the hierarchy, such as ordinary laptops. The protocol tracks the instants that elapse as a time-checking message is sent, received, returned, and received again by its original sender.

Okay, someone needs to fill in the folks at the New Yorker that yes NTP is an acronym, but no you should not write it as "N.T.P." all the time. Lose the periods.

The article is filled with the kind of esoteric details like leap seconds that programmers have to deal with, and most everyone else has no idea even exists. It is also another story of foundational software led by programmers that are now getting very old and unable to maintain the software or the community further. There are a surprising number of projects that have to go through these transitions, and it is often very difficult.