Introduction

The Network Time Service allows computers connected to the University network to keep their internal clocks synchronised to Universal Time.

Many network services rely on the fact that the clocks in each system are kept synchronised. Not only is it essential for various forms of authentication to remote services, it also helps greatly when diagnosing faults if a common time is logged in log files.

Most desktop computer operating systems such as Windows, MacOS and Linux provide preference settings that allow you to synchronise your computer's internal clock with a network time service.

You will sometimes see this referred to as Network Time Protocol settings or NTP for short.