Time Provider Interface

So far, all the components described are those supporting the synchronization of a distributed system's clocks. There must also be a way to ensure they are synchronized to the correct time. The notion of the correct time must come from an outside source - the external time provider. This may be a hardware device such as one that receives time from radio or telephone sources. This external time is given to a Time Server, which then communicates it to other servers. Such an external time provider can be very accurate. If no such device is available, the external time source can be the system administrator, who consults a trustworthy time source and enters it into the system. This cannot, of course, be as accurate as an automatic time source, but it may be sufficient in some cases.

DTS supports the ability to interface with an external time provider through the time-provider interface. The external time provider itself, however, is a hardware device (or a person), and is therefore outside the scope of DCE.