Time Management and Synchronization Overview

In network operations, support for time management and clock synchronization ensures that devices on your network display the correct date and time. Accurate and reliable synchronization of network devices helps in managing security, availability, and efficiency of the network devices. You can configure and synchronize the clocks on the devices so that all devices on the network display accurate time.

Time-based protocols to configure and synchronize the network devices include:

• Precision Time Protocol (PTP)—Provides time synchronization service over precise time and frequency on packet-based networks. In time synchronization, packets are transmitted and received in a session between a primary clock and a client clock.

• Network Time Protocol (NTP)—Provides time synchronizes to all devices on a network. The primary NTP servers are synchronized to a reference clock, such as GPS receivers and telephone modem services. An NTP server receives the time service from a time source, a clock that is attached to a time server, and then distributes and synchronizes the time across all devices on a network.

Benefits

• Detects security breaches on the network devices using log data with accurate time stamps
• Reduces Ethernet latency and jitter with time stamping
• Avoids manual errors with full automation time services
• Improves accuracy and minimizes operation cost to setup Ethernet networks