Local Stratum 1 Time Server Now Available

Here at Steadfast we have always thought it was important to keep and maintain a highly reliable and accurate time service.  To further improve these services, we've now put a GPS antenna on the roof  at our 725 S Wells data center, with a lock on at least four GPS satellites (generally 5 or 6), and have an on-site Spectracom GPS based Stratum 1 time server, gps.time.steadfast.net, that is available to all of our cloud hosting, dedicated server, and data center colocation customers.  The basic definition of a stratum 1 time server is that it be directly linked (not over a network path) to a reliable source of UTC time such as GPS or CDMA transmissions.  This should provide everyone with a low latency and precise time source while also providing additional redundancy on the timing side, as we are still providing access (globally) to our stratum 2 time servers, time.steadfast.net and others.

For help with setting up access to our time servers or for more information on our time / NTP infrastructure, you can read our knowledgebase article: https://support.steadfast.net/Knowledgebase/Article/View/103/0/time-servers-ntp

Benefits of a Stratum 1 Time Source

Time services have been coming into greater demand overall, and with this roof-based antenna we will be able to provide a greater array of time based services, such as PTP / IEEE 1588v2, as they're requested.  Accurate timing can be critical for security applications (SSL, TLS and Kerberos to avoid replay attacks), Microsoft Active Directory, and various financial / trading applications.  A stratum 1 time server can provide time accurate within microseconds, giving you a trusted source of accurate time for those and other applications.