milo@ndmath.UUCP (Greg Corson) (12/21/87)
Ok, here's the problem...Say you have a program running on a mainframe
"host" on an X.25 network like telenet. Attached to this program are
the communications circuits going out to several microcomputers belonging
do people who have dialed up the mainframe host.
Given that the microcomputers have clocks accurate to 1/60 of a second
and the mainframe has a clock accurate to 1 second...can you think of
a reasonable way to get the micros and the mainframe's clocks in sync?
The problem here is, because there is a lot of communications hardware
in the way, you don't know how long a delay there is from the time you
send some information till the time the micro receives it. You also don't
know if the delay will remain constant as system load goes up and down.
I suppose you could have the micro echo time packets back and forth to
the mainframe till you had a good estimate of the average delay time.
But there must be a better way than that. Any ideas?
Greg Corson
19141 Summers Drive
South Bend, IN 46637
(219) 277-5306 (weekdays till 6 PM eastern)
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