The environment I’m working in involves multiple machines (Linux) on a LAN processing data in a chain. I’d like to timestamp things in a way so I can see when it is received/sent by each node to later compare the timestamps for the whole chain. This is a low-latency system.
I would like to understand if it is feasible to compare timestamps taken on different machines with resulution microseconds. What kind of services does one usually use to synchronize the clocks and what resolution is possible to expect? What about clock drifts and other things?
E.g. N nodes and all need to have the clocks synchronized on the second/millisecond/microsecond, is that possible, what is required and what is the overhead?
And of course I’d like it to be as non-intrusive to the network and processing time as possible. 😉
Am I completely looking at something impossible or can this be done?
Looking forward to reading your answers! Thanks!
If all your machines are within a LAN you can probably achieve an accuracy of
200-500microseconds using a localNTPserver. This isn’t particularly network or CPU intensive.