This project is intended for you to gain first-hand experience with clock synchronization across a set of distributed machines. Different methods are available to determine the current time as maintained by a machine and to synchronize this time with another clock.
In the first part of this project you will be observing the degree of synchronization between clocks on all WPI machines that you are able to access. The simplest way to obtain the current time on a Unix machine is to execute the command date, which prints out the current time with second granularity. The gettimeofday() system call can be used to obtain finer granularity, but second granularity will be good enough for this project.
There are different mechanisms for obtaining the current time of another machine. Different Internet time protocols have been defined. For example, the ``daytime'' protocol is defined in RFC-867 for a server process to listen on port 13 using either the TCP or UDP protocols and respond with a printable date string when contacted. A simple way to contact this server using the TCP protocol is with the telnet client, which can be used to connect to an arbitrary port. The following example shows how this service can be run from any machine to obtain the time on the machine garden.
% telnet garden 13 Trying 130.215.28.200... Connected to garden. Escape character is '^]'. Fri Dec 7 15:25:01 2001
Unfortunately, most machines do not support this service and so attempts to connect to port 13 on many WPI machines (and machines elsewhere) will fail.
An alternate approach for obtaining the time on a remote machine is to use a remote execution mechanism such as ssh to run the date command on a remote machine (you will need to verify your password on the remote machine). For example:
% ssh garden date cew's password: Authentication successful. Fri Dec 7 15:29:03 EST 2001
You can compare the time between your local machine and a given remote machine by ``sandwiching'' a local date command before and after obtaining the date from another machine. This sequence can be done using the shell command separator ';'. For example:
% date; telnet garden 13; date Fri Dec 7 15:33:36 EST 2001 Trying 130.215.28.200... Connected to garden. Escape character is '^]'. Fri Dec 7 15:33:36 2001 Connection closed by foreign host. Fri Dec 7 15:33:36 EST 2001
This example shows the time on the machine garden is synchronized at a second granularity with the local machine time.
In your write-up for this part of the project use these examples to obtain the relative time difference on all machines you can access on the WPI campus. Report the approach you use and the results for each pair of machines that you verify.
Just because all of the computer clocks in a lab or at a site are
synchronized does not mean they are synchronized with standard time. The
time standard for the United States is maintained by the Time and Frequency
Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
More information can be found at
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/. You are encouraged to
explore this Web site.
For this portion of the project you will checking/setting the time on your local computer with the standard time. You need to follow the ``Internet Time Service'' link on the NIST page. On the subsequent page is information about accessing standard time via radio stations and the telephone. You will want to follow the links to software and instructions for the type of machine you are using for this portion of the project. Follow the FTP site link if you are on a non-Windows machine.
For a Windows machine, follow the instructions. For a non-Windows machine,
there are a number of files at the FTP site. You will need to download the
files tcp_time_client.c and sw.c. Once you have retrieved
these files simply compile them to create an executable to run on your
machine. Run the executable and it will contact a hardwired NIST machine
to obtain the standard time and compare it with the local clock on your
machine. If there is a difference, you will be prompted to set the clock.
Unless you are running as root on your machine, you will be not be able to
set the clock. This client uses port 13 with a particular time format.
You can download instructions for more details on its format and how it
works.
In your write-up for this portion of the project indicate the machine on which you downloaded the client and the results in running the client. If the client machine was not the same as standard time what is the difference?
In the final portion of the project, you will examine the synchronization of clocks across the Internet. While you could try to contact the daytime service on different machines around the Internet, it is unlikely that you will know lots of machines to and even if you do that these machines will support the service.
However, a large network of servers that often supply a time is available through the Web. Generally when a Web server responds to a request it includes a header indicating its current time. Time synchronization between a Web server and client can be important, particularly if the server supplies an expiration time for downloaded content. You can use the ``Date'' header to compare the time at Web servers across the Internet.
For this portion of the project a simple Web client is being made available
to you. It can be found in the directory /cs/cs4513/public. This
program uses command-line arguments to retrieve a Web object from a
given server and port. Port 80 is the default Web server port. Issuing a
HTTP HEAD request only retrieves headers and not content, which is
sufficient for this work. The following shows a sample invocation to
contact the WPI Web server.
% webclient www.wpi.edu 80 / HEAD HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 21:05:36 GMT Server: Stronghold/2.3 Apache/1.2.6 C2NetUS/2004 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html
The ``Date'' header gives the time on the Web server at the time the request is serviced. You can sandwich a call to this command with local invocation of the date command to compare the time difference between the local machine and the given Web server. You should think about why it makes sense to sandwich the request between two local invocations ofdate and the implications for comparing the accuracy of the clocks. Note that Web servers generally return the time for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is five hours before Eastern Standard Time.
In your write-up for this portion of the project, turn in the results for each
Web server you test. You must test at least 20 servers. You should test a
mix of popular and unpopular servers that you know about. Is there a
correlation between server popularity and accuracy of its clock? Why? As
an aid in coming up with Web sites to test, you might consider contacting
the Web servers at various colleges and universities. The URL
http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/state/
has links to a large number of such sites in the United States. You might
try both large and small sites on this list.
Create a text file and answer the questions posed in the handout. Turn in this file using turnin with project proj3.