FACTS Documentation

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FACTS can obtain the current time through a number of different services. The menu options are listed in order of preference, and not all servers support all services. sntp This is Simple Network Time Protocol, a subset of the full NTP specification. All NTP servers support this - if a server does not support this service, then it is almost certainly not linked to the rest of the NTP network, and accuracy cannot be guaranteed! FACTS attempts to synchronise your clock as accurately as possible. Maximum accuracy for system time is 1µs (1 millioneth of a second), although due to program execution time this will lag behind by up to 20ms - still easily accurate enough for most people! The BattClock, however, can only handle accuracy of one second. (standard port: 123) time/udp The time protocol does not return time as accurately as SNTP, and does not require any extra information about synchronisation. Can be used to sync to a non-NTP machine on a local network. Accuracy to one second. (standard port: 37) time/tcp As time/udp, but uses the TCP protocol instead of UDP. Use this if your network blocks UDP calls. Accuracy to one second. (standard port: 37) daytime This returns time in a human-readable format, and in the local timezone instead of as UTC. Because of this, it takes time for FACTS to parse the data and is not as accurate as the other services. Do not use this unless you absolutely have to! (standard port: 13)