Amazon Time Sync Service

Post by foota » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

gnu8 wrote: post #87

foota wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combination of a time and guaranteed error bound can be used as a primitive in distributed systems. You can get timestamps from requests coming from different systems and relate them in a meaningful way. At least, in a false negative fashion. E.g., if A occurs at T + 100ms with 1ms uncertainty and B occurs at T + 105ms with 2ms uncertainty you can conclude that A happened before B. This does not allow you to alwa…

None of this has to do with Amazon though. I am very uncomfortable with Amazon (or the others) pretending that they invented precision timekeeping and that it is a special feature only they have because it seems like a lot of people believe it and build systems that rely on an API that is proprietary to a cloud vendor rather than just installing ntp.

Post by foota » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #92

foota wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional systems don't offer the same guarantees, do they?

Yes they do. See thread above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29104177