The future of traceable and trusted timestamps

Until now, if you wanted to implement traceable time to high accuracy, you were committing to a considerable investment in equipment and personnel to achieve it.

Advances in network time distribution and synchronisation software mean the cost of synchronising an enterprise across a single time scale are reducing significantly, and opening up application opportunities to new emerging technologies such as IoT, 5G, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), edge and cloud computing, autonomous cars, and the metaverse.

The old architecture required Global Navigational Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as GPS set up to provide a trusted time source, grandmaster clocks and software to distribute and monitor the time locally as well as staff to maintain the systems. 

This meant businesses that implemented accurate time synchronisation and traceable timestamping needed very clear business rationales to justify what could become a very sizeable expense. These fell into three general categories: it was either a technical necessity to operate the business efficiently; a regulatory requirement to be allowed to participate in a market or offer a service; or it was needed to maintain the competitive performance of a system. 

If it was critical, no one criticised the expense, if it was a regulation, people complained and tried to do the minimum and if it was a performance advantage, no one wanted to talk about it so it remained a secret.

Telecoms and power generation are examples of two industries where accurate time synchronisation and traceable timestamping are a technical necessity. Without it, calls will be dropped or electricity distribution will be unsafe. It is an essential cost of doing business and it will remain so for the foreseeable future as 5G is introduced. 

Financial services, banking and fintech companies are an example where accurate time synchronisation and traceable timestamping for automated trading systems is mandated by regulators such as the European Securities and Markets Authority and the Financial Services Authority, so records can be used to reconstruct activity after the event. 

Failure to comply opens high frequency trading and fintech businesses up to the risk of being fined or suspended. If there was no mandate, market confidence in reported outcomes might suffer with the uncertainty produced, but technically trading could continue. It’s not a technical necessity, but it is up to the regulator to decide how much pressure they put on market participants to implement traceable timestamps and precise clock synchronisation. 

This pressure might be light, meaning adoption is slow, or heavy duty with actively issued fines, which would make everyone look at the risk seriously. Whichever approach is adopted, it’s fair to say this kind of regulation is seen as a burden.  

Financial services, banking and fintech companies are also a good example of an industry which has elected to invest in accurate time synchronisation to maintain peak competitive performance. When trading performance is based on speed of response measured in nanoseconds, it is essential to know the latency of your networks and systems to very fine granularity to sustain success. High frequency trading and fintech businesses do it because they will make more money than if they don’t. It is an active choice to gain performance and it is treated as proprietary.

As more industries such as IoT, 5G, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), edge and cloud computing, autonomous cars, and the metaverse become increasingly reliant on automation to execute business and adopt new technical standards, the challenge to achieve greater time synchronisation to understand the automated operation will grow. 

The nature of the challenge will vary by industry, but the justifications for the investment will almost certainly remain the same as they have been in the past. However, what will be very different from the past is the range of timing solutions and applications available to these new emerging tech businesses to address their challenges.

IoT, eSport, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), edge and cloud computing, autonomous cars, and the metaverse will be able to access traceable time as a service, tailored to their accuracy and traceability requirements, rather than needing to invest into their own dedicated hardware, systems and staff. 

We believe GNSS will still remain a favoured option, because it is free to access and can achieve nanosecond precision for those who need the accuracy and can justify the costs of maintenance. But wireline/internet delivered time sources have now matured to the point where they can back up GNSS as a layer 2 delivered service, if only 100 microseconds is required, or replace it altogether using encrypted signals over the public internet if the required standard is accuracy to one millisecond. This is the MiFID II standard for all but high frequency trading machines. These new IP sources are traceable and accurate and have been proven to overcome the limitations of the old open internet NTP sources that have often been found unreliable.

If you take network/internet delivery, then you don’t necessarily need to invest in a physical grandmaster clock at the data centre, unless you want a holdover capacity to protect against any delivery outages. 

A local grandmaster clock is not required at the data centre if a Chain of Comparisons (CoC) to a trusted Stratum 1 time source is maintained over the internet. CoC is where time in the data centre is compared to a trusted source with continual updates, then tiny adjustments are made to keep the local slave clock in synchronisation with the Stratum 1. 

Multiple connections to different networked grandmaster clocks provide redundancy and system logs of the timing mean you always have records should you wish to reconstruct events. 

This network-based architecture means that a single time scale can be “scaled up” across many locations cost effectively without any need for additional hardware, using the customer’s existing network connectivity. A company can enjoy all the benefits of synchronised time at a much lower price than has been possible in the past.

It will make it possible to use an “Offset Timing API” and for existing network connections to extend the CoC from synchronised data centre servers to the personal devices of customers who you interact with. 

The API will be embedded as part of the functionality of an app the customer chooses to download from the business and will enable the timestamps on data sent from the customer device to be compared to traceable time in the data centre to calculate any offsets (allowing for the network latency). 

This enables the calculation of accurate and trusted timestamps for every stage of a customer interaction. It will not matter if the clock of a customer device is wrong, as offset timing will instantly account for it completely non-intrusively. The API allows the time on the customer device to become part of the CoC without there being any need to intrusively adjust the clock on the customer device and risk impact or interference with other applications the customer might use. 

This benign technique can easily be applied to dronetech or IoT devices such as gates, cameras and street furniture to verify their reported timing is accurate using a CoC. 

While the reasons for installing traceable time might not change much, the way it is implemented, the investment required, and the range of its use is poised for dramatic change. Accurate time synchronisation and traceable timestamping are now a virtual service for virtual machines, either on premises or in the cloud, that will not require capital spend or specialised personnel to maintain it unless nanosecond precision is required. 

In the future, all its advantages will be accessed as a service, or licensed as an API to enable a consistent timescale to be applied across any enterprise. Even interactions with customers can now be included, to create a “time fabric” to enhance the quality of data cost-effectively and to build value across an enterprise.

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When thousands of transactions take place every second this level of accuracy and reliability is required to give businesses confidence that their transactions are being properly handled. A highly accurate timing solution like the one outlined above is ready to be rolled out without the purchase and installation of additional timing infrastructure.

Hoptroff Traceable Time as a Service (TTaaS®) is a range of network and software-based timing solutions that are simple, resilient, and cost-effective.

Whether you need the security of verifiable time for compliance, or sub-microsecond delivery into your data centre, our obsession with accuracy will transform your business.