nanog mailing list archives

Re: IERS ponders reverse leapsecond...


From: Harlan Stenn <stenn () nwtime org>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2022 19:41:49 -0700

I've been thinking about this problem for several decades.

I believe I have a Good solution to it. It's the General Timestamp API effort at Network Time Foundation.

If you have been paying any attention, you will immediately realize that the effort is stalled because of a lack of funding.

I'm hesitant to say more, as there are some other groups with partial solutions who think they have the complete solution; and since these groups are much better funded, they are happy to forge ahead based on their view of the world.

I will say that the GTSAPI is designed around a "robust mechanism" that can implement every "local policy choice" I have seen around "how do we want to deal with 'time'?"

It addresses using timestamps beyond the execution of the current boot of the local system, and includes conversions between different versions of different timescales, and a library for arithmetic and comparison functions.

H

On 8/3/2022 8:33 AM, Matthew Huff wrote:
True,

But it's hard enough to get developers to understand the need to code for 61 seconds in a minute, and now they would 
need to code for 59 seconds as well.

If time systems simply skewed the time so that 60 seconds actually just took 61 seconds or 59 seconds, there would be other 
issues, but coders wouldn't be involved.



-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+mhuff=ox.com () nanog org> On Behalf Of Stephane Bortzmeyer
Sent: Wednesday, August 3, 2022 11:19 AM
To: Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>
Cc: nanog () nanog org
Subject: Re: IERS ponders reverse leapsecond...

On Wed, Aug 03, 2022 at 11:09:25AM -0400,  Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com> wrote  a message of 32 lines which said:

General press loses its *mind*:

Indeed, they seem not to know what they write about. "atomic time – the universal way time is measured on Earth – may have to 
change" They don't even know the difference between TAI and UTC.


--
Harlan Stenn <stenn () nwtime org>
http://networktimefoundation.org - be a member!


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