RATINGS (0-5)

Installation: 5

Features: 5

Documentation: 4

GUI: 5

Overall Rating: 4.75

 

Can you trace your network time to an accurate and synchronised time source or authority? Accurate and synchronised timing is essential to improving the efficiency, performance, availability and security of our networks. This is best illustrated by considering a network video system for enterprise security surveillance and remote monitoring used characteristically for parameter security. Imagine the chaos if the video surveillance system, such as video recorders, cameras, and computers for running, viewing and recording video and event management applications are not time synchronized with the accompanied access control system. There could be instances where the video surveillance system shows a person entering the data center minutes after the access control system event log shows that he has already had access due to time being set wrong or due to clock drift on these systems.

 

We all know for a fact that time is of essence in metrics such as transactions per second, CPU time, disk time, connect time etc. especially if you are billed based on usage of computing or telecommunication resources. In the VoIP domain when time is not synchronised or when the clock drifts voice quality suffers. It can result in excessive delays or it can impact the voice billing and logging systems. When plagued with network failures or if you are beset with symptoms such as missing data or voice packets, buffer over flow, or connection loss it helps the cause to have network timing that is accurate and synchronised. On an enterprise wide distributed file sharing system if the time stamps on the accessed files are skewed there are chances that the server may not update the required and necessary file changes.

 

Time is equally significant in the area of compliance. Governments and industry has enacted several regulations such as Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Internal Convergence (News - Alert) of Capital Measurement & Capital Standards (Basel II) etc, to help protect sensitive data and ensure accuracy of our electronic records. These regulations mandate that our electronic records are time stamped with accurate synchronized traceable time. Our central repository of security alerts, logged configuration events and system error messages would be meaningful for event re-construction or for much needed audit forensic analysis provided the time stamps of the audit trails are accurate. Yet again our batch processes and scheduled operations are also very much dependant on time. What we are essentially saying is that time is a common denominator in a lot of our mission critical activities.

 

Some may subscribe to free NTP based public time servers on the Internet. However we cannot verify the accuracy of these sources and also we have to open our network firewall ports. Deploying a 1U rack mounted network time server such as Symmetricom’s (News - Alert) SyncServer S350 seems to be a very reasonable approach towards achieving accurate synchronized traceable time seamlessly and effortlessly. It stays within our secured premises, references the GPS satellites, you do not have to poke holes through our network firewall to access a reliable time source and you can point it to multiple time references.

 

Fig.1 SyncServer S350 Front Panel View

Fig.2 SyncServer S350 Rear Panel View

 

For all the above and many more applications Symmetricom’s (News - Alert) new generation SyncServer S350 network time server equipped with multiple Ethernet network ports and a host of interfaces promises help by providing secure, precise and reliable automated setting of time for our network residents. The SyncServer S350 supports the industry accepted and recommended network-time protocol (NTP). It relies on the global positioning system (GPS) satellites for a time reference for time synchronization and it can help enterprises implement a UTC-traceable time synchronization system using NTP.

 

As goes the saying “ seeing is believing” we decided to get a SyncServer S350. Let us start by looking at the front panel Fig.1. Out of the box the appliance comes equipped with two USB ports. You can connect a compatible USB flash drive to one of the two USB ports for loading software upgrades to the SyncServer S350 and also to back up and or restore configuration from the SyncServer S350. Then there is the RS-232 console port on the SyncServer S350’s front panel giving us access to a command line interface, wherein you get limited status and configuration capability. The four tricolor (Red, Orange, Green) status LEDs at a glance can provide valuable insight as to the various conditions of the SyncServer S350.They are aptly labeled as Sync, Network, NTP and Alarm.

 

The unit’s display is a vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) and a rubber keypad (for various end user command inputs) with keys labeled as ENTER, CLR, TIME, STATUS, MENU and numeric keys.

 

Turning around to the rear panel Fig.2 you will find that technology is plentiful and that the SyncServer S350 is indeed sophisticated. The first thing you will notice is the various time references which are meant for enhanced time keeping ability via various input time references starting with the LF Radio Module (LFR), which is an option. Then you have the RJ-11 port connector for the built in modem that can help obtain dial-up time service over ordinary PSTN lines. This also functions as a stratum 1 NTP server association; the modem association operates as a backup reference.

 

Thanks to the two alarm output relays located on the rear panel of the SyncServer S350 you can integrate it with an external alarm monitoring and reporting system. Additionally it can also send a copy of all the messages to a remote centralised syslog server running syslogd and also send email notifications of alarms if desired.

 

The SyncServer S350 comes equipped with four standard Ethernet ports (Three 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports-LAN1, LAN2, LAN3 and One 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet port-LANGBE). This translates into an ability to support various network topologies, as our networks grow or change i.e. provides the flexibility to adapt to different network layouts. While maintaining microsecond calibre timestamp accuracy it can also service thousands of NTP requests per second.

 

You will also find a slot for the optional plug in T1/E1 module, which can serve as a time reference for the SyncServer S350 as it can automatically detect and track an attached T1 or E1 signal. It also can act as a T1/E1 output primary reference.

 

The port labeled as a Sysplex Out is a timer port which outputs serial time strings for IBM (News - Alert) mainframe Sysplex systems. Situated next to it you will see a series of BNC connectors labeled as 10MHz in -can accept a 10 MHz signal from an external reference into the S350’s hardware clock, 10MHz out- can provide a 10 MHz signal from the S350’s hardware clock, 1PPS in – can accept a once per second pulse from an external reference into the S350’s hardware clock, 1PPS out – can provide a once per second pulse that is synchronous with the S350’s hardware clock, IRIG In (Time code in)- can accept a time code for input from external timing reference into the S350’s hardware clock and you can select the time code format using the web GUI interface, IRIG In (Time code out)- can provide a time code (which you select via the web GUI interface) from the S350’s hardware clock and last but not the least you will see a GPS antenna connector to which you can connect a GPS antenna and use the S350’s built-in 12 channel GPS receiver (preferred reference) for the S350’s hardware clock. The S350 as a stratum-1 time server is directly traceable to national standards for accuracy typically through GPS transmissions.

 

At this stage a question arises, what happens if we loose the GPS signal, which is the preferred reference? That does not pose a problem at all, matter of fact that is where the prowess of the SyncServer S350 as a time server becomes evident. There are plenty of choices when it comes to time reference redundancy. As an example you can set the S350 to use the NTP peering facility and get time from other time servers over your enterprise network or get the in-built modem to regularly dial out to national time services or derive accurate time from various time code inputs or plug in the optional AM radio and synchronize to national time broadcasts or use the optional plug in T1/E1 module. The S350 even allows you to configure the priority of the reference.

 

Symmetricom’s expertise and experience with NTP time servers is very much evident in the latest iteration of its time servers especially the SyncServer S350. Best of all the S350 comes with features galore such as a capability known as the Window Mode- (wherein the S350 can provide synchronization to UTC if only one GPS satellite is visible and if its GPS receiver has an accurate fix of its position), NTP server and peer associations- (you can point to other NTP servers on your enterprise network), Timing holdover (a feature that allows the S350 to continue operating as a stratum 1 NTP server/peer for a period of time if the designated input references become unavailable.), resiliency by incorporating a Rubidium atomic clock oscillator for enhanced holdover performance, inherent support for   both IPv4 and IPv6 ( means the S350 can operate in a IPv4 and or IPv6 network environment ), NTP authentication- using MD5 keys-symmetric key cryptography or auto key-public key cryptography (These authentication techniques prevent or mitigate spoofing, intercept, and replay-type attacks.), You can even create redundant Ethernet ports on the S350 by bonding ( e.g. the S350’s LAN2 and LAN3 network ports can be bonded together as a single redundant Ethernet with a single IP address) improving the availability.

 

Peer associations on the S350 provide an important backup source of time if for some reason you are not able to get time from the GPS satellites or other input reference sources become unavailable. A pair of peer associations lets two NTP servers evaluate each other as part of their clock selection algorithms, but prevents "timing loops" where both servers lock to each other. This approach is typically applied to clusters of NTP servers on a LAN or WAN, and provides excellent synchronization and redundancy.

 

From a security and appliance management perspective passwords, SSL, RADIUS, MD5, HTTPS, SSH, Telnet, access control lists, DHCP, SNMP etc. are supported on the S350 and can be enabled or disabled through the web based GUI.

 

Now is the opportune time for us to do some functional testing on the SyncServer S350.

 

Operational Testing

 

We started by selecting an outdoor location for the GPS antenna (with excellent visibility of the sky and horizon), connected the antenna to the port marked as GPS antenna on the S350’s back panel. If you have difficulties in finding a suitable outdoor location you can operate the S350 in a mode called window mode (UTC synchronization with one visible GPS satellite and S350’s accurate position). We powered up the SyncServer S350 and the display came live with the Symmetricom logo, booting messages and eventually showed the default time screen. We found the front panel keypad /display very handy. Using the TIME, STATUS, and MENU front panel buttons allowed us to get a lot system details first hand and also set some parameters. A classic example, is how quick we were able to verify the GPS antenna installation by using the STATUS button and in GPS status screen the status indicated it as locked with the number of satellites equal to 4.

 

The STATUS button at a glance provided various status screens such as SyncServer status (provided information such as model, version etc), GPS receiver status (status of receiver, no of satellites, electrical state of the antenna, acquisition mode etc), NTP status (stratum, NTP daemon status, number of NTP packets etc), Alarm status (no of alarms, major/minor alarms), LAN status (status of the various network port, state of the port, IP address, gateway address etc), hardware clock status (input reference status, status of synchronization etc).The MENU button facilitated viewing and setting up the LAN1 port configuration, then under system control we could setup the password, shutdown (halt the S350 so that you can power down the appliance gracefully), USB (using the built-in USB port we can backup current configuration, restore configuration or even do a software upgrade to the S350).Security is of paramount importance and we liked the ability to locally lock the keypad i.e. the keypad on the S350 using a password so that unauthorized users cannot access it.

 

Now let us move on to the web interface (before we do that we need to get the default LAN1 IP address using the front panel STATUS button). From our test PC we launched Internet explorer entered the default IP address as a URL and the S350 login page was displayed (we used the default username and password for our testing). Once our credentials were authenticated the S350 displayed an array of options via a set of neatly laid out and easily accessible buttons labeled as –STATUS, NETWORK, NTP, TIMING, REFERENCES, SYSTEM, ADMIN, SERVICES, LOGS, WIZARDS and HELP. These helped us navigate around in an impressively quick fashion. We clicked on the NETWORK button to configure the four LAN ports, as we desired, moved to the SNMP page to configure SNMP and create SNMP users, then to the SNMP Traps to add SNMP trap recipients. Going to the TIMING hardware clock page we selected our clock source priorities (GPS, time code, 1PPS, 10 MHz), then continued to the NTP button (we setup NTP associations, MD5 keys, Autokey etc). The REFERENCES button was useful for creating an NTP server association for the modem and the GPS page gave us access to the GPS receiver's Position and Mode. We are sure the GUI web based interface and menu system will appeal to novices as well as advanced users. On one hand it is very intuitive, simple and useful and on the other allows advanced users the latitude to configure and implement various configurations with a minimum of effort, everything being just a mouse click away!

 

In a short span of time, the SyncServer S350 was up and running. We enabled NTP configuration on the routers, switches, and firewalls on our test bed, on some computers we loaded an NTP client so that all of these could automatically synchronize and derive accurate time from Symmetricom’s SyncServer S350 NTP server. Let us not forget to mention the context-sensitive help system within the SyncServer S350’s web GUI that takes much of the intrigue out of the configuration and installation process. For diagnostics we found that we could start with the tri-color LED’s and then access the S350’s display/keypad or use the Web GUI to get more granular information.  

With features such as redundant Ethernet ports, independent multiple references etc the SyncServer S350 represents a serious shift in the network time server appliance landscape with far more emphasis on security, redundancy and versatility coupled with ease-of-use and high availability.

 

Room for Improvement

 

There wasn’t anything significant to report on, it performed as expected.

 

Conclusion

 

Overall Symmetricom’s SyncServer S350 presents a very simple and straightforward approach towards UTC-traceable time synchronization using NTP.For those that do not have a NTP time server, as always I would recommend testing the SyncServer S350 to provide secure, precise and automated setting of time using NTP.

 

SYMMETRICOM, INC.

2300 Orchard Parkway

San Jose, California

95131-1017

 

Tel: 408-433-0910

Web site: http://www.ntp-systems.com/products.asp
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Biju Oommen is a telecommunications and networking solutions consultant with a special focus on enterprise products and solutions.