Industrial Research's Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL)is now providing
a publicly accessible primary Network Time Protocol (NTP) server for the
synchronisation of computer time for connections within New Zealand.

The Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL) is the official disseminator of
the time standard, UTC(MSL), for New Zealand. (Most people will be familiar
with their time service disseminated as a series of "pips" broadcast by
Radio New Zealand on the National Radio station. ) MSL is now providing a
Network Time Protocol (NTP) stratum 1 server for connections within New
Zealand. The server is referenced to UTC(MSL) by direct connection of a
pulse per second signal from the master caesium atomic clock which is part
of the New Zealand time standard. The time in the server is typically stable
to around 1 microsecond with respect to the time in the caesium clock.

Using the server
The server is a publicly available server open to all connections from
within NZ. Its address is msltime.irl.cri.nz (Note: this server only
services NTP and 'Simple Network Time Protocol' (SNTP) requests. It does not
respond to 'datetime' requests. Government agencies however, should register
their use of the server with MSL by sending the IP address of their server
(a static address is required) and a contact email address to
time@i... . The reason for this requirement is that some servers
overseas have been flooded with requests from devices such as routers and
access to the server may have to be restricted at some time in the future.

Agencies should limit their requests to come from at most three servers and
then any additional server should connect to what will be the agency's three
stratum 2 clocks. The best and most accurate way of using this service is to
install the official NTP distribution from www.ntp.org. Versions are
available for most versions of Unix. Windows versions are available for
Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

Please note that this message has been liberally pillaged from a fact sheet
on the E-government website (http://www.e.govt.nz/programme/docs/Time.pdf)
and further details are contained there (sorry, pdf only at present. I'm
working on getting more accessible pages up there).

Regards

Mark Harris
Manager Moderation and Web Standards
State Services Commission
PO Box 329, Wellington, NZ
Tel: 64 4 495 2844
Email mailto:web.guidelines@s...
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