Tight bounds for clock synchronization

d Abstract] Christoph Lenzen Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK) ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland [e-mail] Thomas Locher Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK) ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland [e-mail] Roger Wattenhofer Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK) ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland [e-mail] We present a novel clock synchronization algorithm and prove tight upper and lower bounds on the worst-case clock skew that may occur between any two participants in any given distributed system. More importantly, the worst-case clock skew between neighboring nodes is (asymptotically) at most a factor of two larger than the best possible bound. While previous results solely focused on the dependency of the skew bounds on the network diameter, we prove that our techniques are optimal also with respect to the maximum clock drift, the uncertainty in message delays, and the imposed bounds on the cl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: PODC
• Authors: Christoph Lenzen, Thomas Locher, Roger Wattenhofer
• Keywords: Clock Drifts, Clock Synchronization Algorithm, Parallel Computing, PODC 2009, Worst-case Clock Skew