If your background is Windows NT administration, you are familiar with Windows NT Date and Time Synchronization. It is a fairly manual process. You designate a time server for the NT domain, see Setup Domain Time Source Server . Then you embed the

NET TIME /DOMAIN: /SET

command in user's login scripts to sychronize workstation date and time with the NT server designated as a time source.

Windows 2000 automates the process. It is no longer manual. This is one of many issues where Windows 2000 has improved over Windows NT. Because of Kerberos, all W2K workstations and services must have synchronized times. The synchronization is built into the authenication process. See Basic Operation of the Windows Time Service. The Windows Time Synchronization service, W32Time, is a fully compliant implementation of the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) as detailed in IETF RFC1769. In general, the PDC emulator for the W2K domain is the authoritative time source. Workstations and servers will date and time synch to it. You can check it periodically and adjust, but most PCs have clocks that lose time. If you can, you need to use the sntp functionality of W2K. On the PDC, run the following command:

net time /setsntp: ntp2.usno.navy.mil

-or-

net time /setsntp: 192.5.41.209

This will synchronize the PDC's date and time with the US Navy's internet-available sntp time source. And no, the /setsntp parm is not available to Windows NT since its date and time service is not sntp compliant.

Related time server tips:

• Greyware's analysis of the Windows Time Service (W32Time) and NET TIME
  they feel there are serious issues with W32Time as implemented in W2K
• The Windows Time Service W32Time
• Registry Entries for the W32Time Service
• How to Synchronize the Time on a Windows 2000-Based Computer in a Windows NT 4.0 Domain
• W32Time Client Does Not Fail Over to Secondary NTP Servers by FQDN

well written. it is essential. or at least very valuable.