Determining actual elapsed (wall-clock) time

[Roy Smith]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> I guess as long as the NTP client is set up to ensure the time 
> adjustments are smaller than some value X, it would be acceptable.

NTP is generally capable of keeping the various system clocks on a LAN 
within a few ms of each other, and within a few 10's of ms over the 
Internet from GPS, WWV, or similar international time references.

> I'll have to look into how to set up Windows XP to prevent users from 
> changing the time on their own, assuming that's possible.

On a single-user system like Windows, you pretty much have to assume the 
user can do anything.  They can turn off NTP, reset the clock, reboot the 
system, uninstall your software, whatever.

If you could check to see that NTP is running, it doesn't prove anything.  
A malicious and determined user could set up another machine as a NTP 
server to synch against, and even configure that machine to look like it 
was a stratum-1 reference (i.e. an atomic clock).

At some point, you need to decide if you trust the system administrator to 
supply you with an accurate system clock or not.  If you don't, and it's 
really important that you have an accurate time reference, you've got an 
interesting engineering problem on your hands.