To be honest, neither have I. But NTP plays a big part in keeping the Internet -- and millions of businesses large and small -- up and running every day.
NTP is the leading "time synchronization system" behind our Macs, Windows, many network servers, and Linux computers. I'm not a technology writer, but it sounds pretty darn important.
What does NTP do, exactly? For the average, Internet-using employee, it means that our laptops and desktops can ring up the NTP server regularly to make sure the computer's time clock stays accurate. This way, the time stamps on our emails, files and instant messages stay correct and up-to-date. For companies across industries, timing is incredibly crucial for everything from billing to customer interactions to documentation.
In layman's terms, NTP is what keeps your company from looking like grandma's house after the clocks move ahead at Daylight Saving time. The cable box on her television has updated to the correct time, but her microwave is still flashing "12:00" for some reason. Meanwhile, the digital clock on her nightstand is running an hour behind, and her digital stove clock is running 45 minutes ahead, because "Oh, for Pete's sake, I never know how to change it, and I can just look at my kitchen wall clock when I want to know what time it is!"
Without NTP, the average office would be a lot like grandma's house. A truly fantastic, highly informative InformationWeek article lays it all out for us:
The importance of NTP to the daily functioning of businesses can't be overstated. The NTP time stamp is part of how equities firms show that trades took place when they say they did, an element that helps them stay in regulatory compliance. Air traffic control relies on NTP for synchronized clocks. Robotic manufacturing uses it to carry out closely timed operations requiring coordinated time. Google search operations rely on it, which is why the Google security team scrutinizes NTP for bugs.So why am I writing about this? NTP is an open source project, and over time the maintenance of NTP has migrated largely into the lap of one person, who is reportedly spending many, MANY hours maintaining this crucial service. He is asking for support (read: funding), or he might have to look for "regular" work in the very near future (read: next month).
It opens up a lot of questions. Why won't the big technology players pony up a little bit of cash to fund an open-source project they seem to rely heavily on to maintain their systems and products? Who will step up to fund NTP to keep it running smoothly?
Then there are the every-day implications. What if the time on our servers goes haywire and every billing record suddenly becomes unreliable? What if the document we stayed up all night editing gets overwritten by our co-worker's 8-week-old version of the document because the server's clock is wrong?
What if our cell phone provider sends us a bill for a 5-hour call that was only two minutes long because one of the company's servers is suddenly running on the wrong time? Oh man, can somebody Kickstart this guy, pronto? Hello, it's the Internet backbone calling, and it needs some cold, hard cash!
Well, what do I know; I'm a simple workplace blogger who is trying to set her stove clock while she waits for more Apple Watch updates. Still, the story struck me as a pressing issue worth highlighting, and it's something to think about as you frantically pull up an email time stamp to prove to an angry client that you sent the email at 4:58 -- clearly in advance of the 5 o'clock deadline. But who's counting?
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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