A network time heads-up. There has been a debate raging for some years on whether or not to change Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) to be the same as International Atomic Time (TAI), which is due for a major vote at the ITU-R in January. Previous votes have seen it defeated but it keeps coming back. To explain the background: The rotation of the earth is not precisely the same length of time each year and currently a decison is made every six months whether or not to correct UTC to ensure that midday really is when the sun is at its highest point over the Greenwich meridian, by adding a leap second. 24 have been added over the last 40 years and UTC now differs from TAI by 34 seconds. The proposal, if agreed, will drop this correction and so over a long time the connection between time and the rotation of the earth will be lost. The implication for networks is potentially quite profound. NTP currently supports leap seconds as do GPS satellite time signals and DCF77 radio clocks but if this proposal is agreed that will be turned off. So if you provide time to a system that take a photograph at the same time every day then that will need two time signals, one for TAI and a new one for earth rotation time. Same problem for anything to do with sun rises/falls and tides (though obviously the precision may not be an issue for some years). If you want to read more then this article covers the arguments quite well, though biased like me against the idea: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/un-vote-could-allow-mankind-to-cont... I'm not sure if NZ has a position on this, but I am trying to find out. cheers Jay PS A reminder about our free NTP service, details at: www.ntp.net.nz PPS If you think this is off-topic for this list then please let me know! -- Jay Daley Chief Executive .nz Registry Services (New Zealand Domain Name Registry Limited) desk: +64 4 931 6977 mobile: +64 21 678840