NTP - Understanding Computer Timestamps Computers Articles | September 10 Scooter Gennett Reds Jersey , 2008
The way a computer deals with time is totally different to the ways humans perceive it. We arrange time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years Barry Larkin Reds Jersey , while computers on the other hand a...

The way a computer deals with time is totally different to the ways humans perceive it. We arrange time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years Joe Morgan Reds Jersey , while computers on the other hand arrange time as a single number representing the seconds that have passed from a single point in time, known as the prime epoch.

Most computers use NTP (Network Time Protocol) to deal with time and on networks many are synchronised using a dedicated NTP time server.? NTP knows nothing about days, years or centuries, only the seconds from the prime epoch.? This prime epoch is set (for most systems) at midnight at the turn of the century twentieth century that for a human would be recorded as something like: 00:00 - 01,01,1900.

Computers Johnny Bench Reds Jersey , however, count time as the number of seconds past this point. If a computer was around in 1900 its timestamp on midnight January 1 would be 0 while in 1972 at the same date the timestamp would be 2,272,060,800, which represents the number of seconds since 1900.

The timestamps restart every 136 years with the next wrap around due in 2036 Ken Griffey Youth Jersey , this has caused uneasiness amongst some who fear a Millennium Bug type scenario, although most doubt such events would occur, however, when a wrap-around of the timestamp does happen an era integer will be added (+1), to allow computers to deal with time spans that cover more than one wrap-around.? If computers and NTP need to deal with time that spans before the prime epoch a negative integer is used (for the year 1500 a -3 will be used to represent three cycles of 136 years).
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Timestamps are used in virtually every transaction that modern computers are tasked to do such as sending emails, debugging and programming. Because time is linear Tony Perez Youth Jersey , a computer knows that each timestamp is always greater than the previous one and therefore computers and NTP find it difficult to deal with inaccuracies in time, particularly when time suddenly appears to go backwards.

This can happen if computers