System.Time.Clock Design Issues

Ashley Yakeley ashley at
Fri Feb 4 06:27:04 EST 2005

In article <420354F4.6030201 at>,
 Keean Schupke <k.schupke at> wrote:

> Why doesnt the library connect to one of the TAI clocks, and read the
> leap second table.

This means having to make network connections just to tell the time. Is 
this a good idea?

> If the system clock is UTC the system must be running NTP and be connected
> to a network. If it is not running NTP the system time is more or less 
> TAI anyway
> (no leap seconds occur without a networked time reference and NTP)

I think even people who don't use NTP set their clock to UTC at the time 
they set it. You can call that TAI with a fixed offset if you want (and 
an offset we can't discover), but the difference is probably less 
significant than the clock drift, and in the long term they'll likely 
eventually set it to UTC again.

Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

More information about the Libraries mailing list