Internet time services/clock utility
Jim Varney (jvarney@mail2.quiknet.com)
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 22:07:27 -0700
SeeSat subscribers may be interested in learning that it is possible to
obtain accurate time signals over the Internet. There is a growing worldwide
network of time servers that can be used to set your PC clock. According
to informational web pages at the U.S. Naval Observatory and at the University
of Delaware, an accuracy of 1 millisecond is possible accessing these time
servers using the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP). In practice, typical
accuracies are in the 20 to 50 millisecond range. This is certainly
accurate enough for visual satellite observing, where even under the best
conditions a human observer cannot achieve better than 100 millisecond
accuracy.
I have written a small program for Windows 3.1 and up called TIMESIG.EXE.
It is designed to simulate a radio or telephone time signal facility by
issuing a 50 millisecond-long "tick" sound every second and a 100 mSec
beep every minute. There is a also a digital display of the time.
When I wrote TIMESIG.EXE I optimized the coding to keep the computer's
execution time as short as possible. The code is set to read your PC
clock every 1 millisecond.
In order to use TIMESIG.EXE accurately, you must set your PC clock with
an SNTP program. For this I recommend the excellent freeware program
Dimension 4.
The requirements for TIMESIG.EXE and SNTP are
-- a PC with Windows 3.1, 3.11 or Win95
-- a sound card and speaker
-- a SLIP or PPP Internet connection using Winsock
-- an SNTP program
-- a listing of regional time server Internet addresses
For those interested, I provide TIMESIG.EXE, Dimension 4, and a listing
of 98 time servers for North America, Europe and Australia on my
home page at
http://www.quiknet.com/~jvarney
That's all I have "time" for now...
Jim Varney
jvarney@mail2.quiknet.com
Sacramento, California
"Does anyone really know what time it is?" -- old song by Chicago