Subject: Some thoughts on TST time precision

From: "Bill Lattin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 17:07:48 -0700

We continue to debate the required amount of time precision required with
some arguing that only resolution to the level of a second is required.

Here is an anecdote - a long time ago, about 15 years, the telecommunication
industry could think of no useful reason to provide telephone call
'timestamps' to a precision of less than 6 seconds (1/10th minute).  Hence
bills were computed on the basis of call lengths with a granualrity of
1/10th a minute.

Then along came Asynchronous Transfer Mode, ATM.  All of a sudden you had
companies offering long distance service where they would initiate and
disconnect a 'call' in less than 6 seconds, yet send 5 seconds worth of
packets.  These companies managed to get free telephone service, because of
an outdated time stamp precision.

Now telcos plan to have a Call Time Stamp Precision of 1 millisecond.

To give an idea of the rapid advance of timing precision requirements. In
1980, datum timing was mostly 1 second resolution.  After the advent of
microprocessor based timing, 1 millisecond became the standard.  In the
1990's with GPS, 1 microsecond became the standard and 10s of a nanosecond
became the holy grail.

The standard should support at least 1 microsecond for applications 10 years
from now
that we don't conceive of now.

Let's not be guilty of a short event horizon.

Cheers,

Bill Lattin

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From: "Aram Perez" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 17:44:58 -0700

And to second what Bill Lattin wrote, not too long ago, many programmers and
technical folks thought that two digits was all you would ever need to
represent the year ;-)

Aram Perez