Tag: NTP

An NTP or Network Time Protocol server is a crucial component in networked environments that synchronizes computer and device clocks, ensuring accurate and consistent time for various operations. It obtains precise time information from reliable sources and distributes it to client devices, providing synchronized clocks across the network. This synchronization is vital for log accuracy, security protocols, coordination in distributed systems, and regulatory compliance.

Network Time Protocol

It is essential to keep the correct time on a server. This is especially true when it comes to processing financial transactions or other vital functions which need to be handled in a specific order. Using the Network Time Protocol (or NTP), computers can synchronize their internal clock times with the internet standard reference clocks. In essence, NTP is a hierarchy of servers. The higher the Stratum number of a server, the more accurate the timing is and the lower the Stratum number of a server is, the lower the accuracy and time stability. Stratus are defined by the distance from the initial reference clock.

Introduction

In this article we will learn what the Network Time Protocol (NTP) is and how to install it on the two Linux distributions most commonly used on Liquid Web’s servers. We will be focusing on using CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04 servers, but the process is largely the same on other recent versions of each. Before we start, make sure we are familiar with using SSH (Secure Shell) as we’ll need it to connect to the server. Here’s a link to one of our articles on the basics of SSH if you are unfamiliar with its usage.

The time on your dedicated server might not be something you think about every day, but it is vitally important to keeping every piece of your server running in sync. Since it is so crucial, a lot of effort has been made by Linux developers to make it run smoothly without much effort. However, there are a few things you are going to be able to want to do with time on your server.