Configuring Network Time Protocol (NTP) service

Configuring Network Time Protocol (NTP) service

Synchronizing the system clocks of computers on a network is important for:

security
scientific research
accurate service timing (especially for chargeback)
special service implementations (network distributed audio and video, and so on)
source control, configuration and version management
networked databases and filesystems

On networks with Internet access, you can use NTP, the Network Time Protocol, to synchronize clocks on different hosts. NTP synchronizes clocks to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the international time standard. A set of NTP servers, located on and accessible via the Internet, provide NTP services to machines with Internet access. It is also possible to use NTP without Internet access but with diminished accuracy.

In this implementation of NTP, the xntpd(1Mtcp) time daemon (in.xntpd) runs on each host on your network. The daemons communicate using a hierarchical scheme in which servers on the Internet pass time data to additional servers and clients throughout the Internet.