The Internet gets global time check

Government and Industry have joined forces to synchronise time on the Internet to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and try to establish a global standard.

Two atomic clock initiatives were launched on January 1 2000 - one backed by the ISP industry through the London Internet Exchange (Linx) and the other by the IMRG (Interactive Media and Retail Group) and government.

But as of today, they will combine to offer companies and consumers a more accurate way of setting server and desktop PC clocks to Greenwich Electronic Time (GeT). A web site providing the tools to measure, manage and set internal systems to GeT free of charge has been set up, enabling accurate time-stamping of communications and transactions. The underlying infrastructure will be provided by Linx.

The time standard is expected to have huge implications on international procurement via the Web, on e-trading, delivery of electronic documents as well as digital signatures.

James Roper, CEO of IMRG said: "Without a holistic time framework and tools, occasions will inevitably occur in ecommerce when goods are not owned by anyone, presenting opportunities for chaos and crime."

Colum Joyce, global ecommerce strategy manager at DHL, told Silicon it is essential this standard is set to GMT. "We currently operate to GMT but it does not provide us with the granular measure of time that is necessary to deal online. I need to have a second-by-second or nanosecond agreement between my servers in order to make a commitment in contract particularly those that involve exchange rates," he said.

He continued: "For businesses like DHL, Interflora or Timex that are dealing with this project GMT, GET and UTC [Coordinated Universal Time] aligning means that companies have a no-cost, low-change option in terms of aligning Internet trading with their existing time standard. Any business decision to change the time standard away from a GMT-based time standard is absolute suicide in the modern world."

He added that to change to a different time standard could cost companies five to ten times what Y2K cost industry.

For more information see http://www.get-time.org .