OSF DCE Administration Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Administration Guide—Core Components
signals. DTS offers a Time-Provider Interface (TPI) that describes how a time-provider
process can pass UTC time values to a DTS server and propagate them in the network.
The TPI also permits other distributed time services to interoperate with DTS.
DTS provides many other valuable services for computer networks that run distributed
applications. The major features and benefits of DTS are the following:
• Correctness—DTS maximizes the probability that a client will receive the correct
time. DTS uses UTC as a base reference and defines any time interval containing
UTC as correct.
• Quantitative Time Measurement—DTS uses specific measurement and
manufacturer’s specifications to determine the quality of the times that are reported
by servers.
• Fault Tolerance—DTS reports faulty servers and does not use their time values
during clock synchronizations.
• Management Capability—The DCE and DTS control programs (dcecp and dtscp)
enable you to control and monitor the software.
• Application Programming Interface (API)—DTS provides an interface that allows
applications to obtain, compare, and calculate UTC time values.
• Local Time Translation—When displaying time values, DTS translates the UTC
times that it uses internally into local time values.
• Monotonicity—DTS normally provides unidirectional clock adjustment. You can
use the DCE or DTS control program, though, for nonmonotonic clock adjustment.
• Automatic Configuration—DTS entities use RPC profiles (search tables) to obtain
the locations of servers in a local area or cell.
• Efficiency—Complexity is placed in the servers; network overhead is minimal.
23.1 DTS Advantages
DTS offers all the features that are normally provided by a time service, but it also has
several features that enhance network performance. The following subsections describe
these DTS features:
• Applications support
• External time-provider support
• Manageability
• Quantitative inaccuracy measurement
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