Synchronizing Systems on a LAN: An Introduction to PTPd

For the last 20 years NTP has been the standard way that most computers have been synchronizing their internal clocks with an external reference. While NTP works well in the wide area it is incapable of synchronizing systems into the millisecond range. Applications such as factory automation and robotics require distributed systems to have a more accurate sense of time than can be provided by NTP. PTPd is a BSD Licensed, open source, implementation of the IEEE-1588 time protocol which can be used to synchronize systems on a LAN to within a millisecond of an external time source. This talk will cover the basics of the Precision Time Protocol, and introduce the PTP daemon and its usage.