Overview
The Consistent Time Integration Profile (CT) provides a means to ensure that the system clocks and time stamps of the many computers in a network are well synchronized. This profile specifies synchronization with a median error less than 1 second, which is sufficient for most purposes.
Various infrastructure, security, and acquisition profiles require use of a consistent time base on multiple computers, to synchronize logs, authenticate users, digitally sign documents, etc.
Actors and Transactions
The following diagram provides an overview of the CT profile Actors, Transactions and their interactions.
The table below lists the transactions for each actor directly involved in the CT profile. To claim compliance with CT, an actor shall support all required transactions (labeled “R”).
Actor | Transaction | Optionality |
---|---|---|
Time Client | Maintain Time [ITI-1] | R |
Time Server | Maintain Time [ITI-1] | R |
Transactions
- Maintain Time [ITI-1] - Uses NTP (RFC1305) or SNTP (RFC4330) time service responses to maintain synchronization with Time Servers and maintain the local system clock.