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NPL partners with JISC

Partnership to provide accurate, resilient time for UK research and education using the Janet network.

3 minute read 

Taking its reference from the UK’s national time scale, UTC(NPL), the feed from NPL and JISC would deliver a trusted ‘common clock’ to improve accuracy for UK science, engineering and technology. 

Jisc has signed a partnership with NPL, aimed at delivering resilient, precise time services to institutions over Janet, the UK’s national research and education network (NREN). Traceable to the UK’s national time scale, UTC(NPL), the NPLTime Access® service offers users a time signal over fibre-optic links that are traceable to UTC(NPL), not dependent on GNSS. Making this service available via Janet will provide researchers access to a trusted ‘common clock’ with an accurate and resilient time signal, traceable to the UK’s national timescale.  

“The faster, more complex and more integrated our members’ network infrastructures become, the more they rely on ultra-precise timing,” says Ben Chapman, Head of Architecture and Engineering at Jisc.  

“The UK research sector also has to manage ever-increasing volumes of data, which makes synchronised time signals even more vital to ensure accuracy. This agreement with NPL will enable us to explore how embedding NPLTime Access® into the backbone of the Janet Network can benefit UK universities and research institutions.  

“Our aim is to provide our members with the most accurate time services possible to support production network services and research in areas as diverse as seismologic measurement, radio astronomy and electricity distribution – all of which rely on the most precise timing possible to ensure the accuracy of their data.” 

NPLTime Access is a highly resilient terrestrial time synchronisation service referenced to a group of commercial atomic clocks that are operated by NPL and have been providing the reference for precise timekeeping in the UK for over 30 years. By eliminating reliance on GNSS - which can be susceptible to jamming or solar interference– it offers significantly more resilience. 

The integration of NPLTime Access® would extend and strengthen the existing Jisc network time service, which currently synchronises the computer clock times of managed devices connected to an institution’s IP network to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). With future accuracy requirements narrowing to just  microseconds, Jisc and NPL are working on how best to meet the needs of the sector.

Maintaining a more consistent time reference between infrastructures also improves cyber resilience by enabling security teams to manage and protect their networks more efficiently. 

Elena Parsons, Strategic Business Development manager for NPL’s commercial timing services commented on the new partnership: “NPL’s partnership with Jisc, delivering UTC(NPL) traceable time across UK academia, offers a synchronisation capability through trusted timestamps, and is a significant step toward realising a system-of-systems approach to national resiliency for time. We are looking forward to the closer engagement to support UK R&D, innovation and skills development.”  

Find out more here

12 Dec 2024