Keeping the Internet on Time: NetActuate Collaborates with NTP Pool to Ensure Critical, Connected Systems Stay in Sync

Global edge services provider NetActuate is pleased to announce it now hosts the NTP Pool’s master servers. The NTP Pool is a virtual cluster of timeservers that provide reliable, easy to use network time protocol (NTP) service for millions of clients around the world. A foundational building block of the internet, NTP ensures event sequencing, security logging, version control, software updates, and other critical tasks are reliably and successfully completed.

Without NTP, the time on individual systems and devices gradually gets out of sync. Keeping accurate time across a network is critical – in some use cases, discrepancies of even fractions of a second can cause major problems. NTP is the internet’s way of continually “synchronizing the watches” of servers, smart devices, computers, applications, and other connected hardware and software.

Launched by Adrian von Bidder in 2003, the NTP Pool has been maintained and developed by Ask Bjørn Hansen and a talented, dedicated group of contributors since 2005. In the early 2000s, resource consumption of the popular NTP servers began rapidly increasing. In response, many closed their operations, unable or unwilling to keep up with demand. To ensure NTP services remained available and open to all who need it, the NTP Pool was deployed. Today, hundreds of millions of systems around the world rely on the NTP Pool for accurate time.

As a provider of modular, flexible global network and infrastructure services, NetActuate partners with the providers that drive our connected world – our presence, forward. The NTP Pool was looking for the right mix of reliability, flexibility, and performance for their critical service when they contacted NetActuate.

“We were pleased by NetActuate’s myriad infrastructure options, from dedicated bare metal, to virtual machines, to colocation services,” said Hansen. “We are leveraging NetActuate’s global footprint to bring our equipment to the edge in leading carrier hotels. Their expertise and focus on delivering performance anycast across diverse global markets will ensure the NTP Pool’s critical service is offered with unmatched reliability and the lowest possible latency.”

“We’re excited to work with the NTP Pool and further our commitment to delivering highly available infrastructure services at the global edge,” said Kate Gerry, Director of Global Networking at NetActuate. “As a provider of low latency network services, we’ve used and benefited from the NTP Pool for decades and are thrilled to work more closely with Hansen and the NTP Pool contributors.”

To learn more about NetActuate’s services, please schedule a call with a solution specialist by calling 1-800-419-2656 or completing our online contact form.