Comment by geerlingguy

Time has been on my mind a lot lately, testing the OCP's Time Card, working with bringing up PTP on the Raspberry Pi CM4, and most recently interviewing Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, who was one of the people who coordinated UTC for many years (and now works as chief scientist at a local clock/timing company).

It's always fascinating how certain individuals can really push things forward in a much greater way than you'd think. NTP changed a lot of what's possible online and in software, by giving a reliable more centralized timing solution for much of the world (still to this day).

But talking to some actual experts in the field (like Dr. Matsakis), it's fascinating some of the additional problems you encounter when Internet, LAN, and even GPS connectivity can't be guaranteed, but you still need many devices with microsecond-level accuracy for long periods of time.