ntp.aunsw.88.io

Team Compute aunsw.88.io
1

Network Time Service

Accurate and independent time sources are critical in computing at all levels.

88.io contributes to the global time infrastructure in multiple areas:

  1. Global Time Server
  2. Decimal Calendar
  3. Simple Time Zone
2

Global Time Servers

Time is one of the most important property of modern life, yet currently there is a lack of independent reliable time sources.

  1. Satellite based time sources are controlled by too few parties
  2. Public time pools on the internet lacks provenance and are of widely variable qualities.

Like all citizen ecosystems, aunsw.88.io provides its own independently manged set of Network Time Protocol based global time sources (ntp.88.io) using traceable terrestrial atomic clocks from reliable sources worldwide.

This terrestrial Time Service makes use of our own Anycast Service for high performance and reliability.

3

Geo Restriction Removed

Since the aunsw.88.io ecosystem is part of the Citizen Startup movement, we will be relaxing the normal location based restrictions, allowing people and devices from OUTSIDE of Australia to use ntp.aunsw.88.io

4

Decimal Calendar

Internally 88.io uses an Unix Time based Decimal Calendar. Externally the standard Gregorian Calendar remains on all end user interfaces.

Using traditional UTC / GMT is verbose and confusing, especially when dealing with durations across time zones.

Unix Time is a simple number that allows everyone worldwide to communicate and calculate time without ambiguity. No more worry about daylight savings and leap years.

Unix Time UTC / GMT Sydney, Australia
1531418938 2018-07-12 18:08:58 2018-07-13 04:08:58
1631418938 2021-09-12 03:55:38 2021-09-12 13:55:38
1731418938 2024-11-12 13:42:18 2024-11-13 12:42:18

The simplicity of decimal Unix Time really shines when working with durations like half an hour, a day or a year across multiple time zones.

Decimal Calendar Gregorian Calendar Fuzzy Block
10 10 seconds
100 1.7 minutes
1,000 16.7 minutes
1,800 0.5 hour Local Block
3,600 1 hour
10,000 2.8 hours
86,400 1 day
100,000 1.2 days Global Block
1,000,000 11.6 days
10,000,000 3.9 months**
31,536,000 365 days
100,000,000 3.2 years**
1,000,000,000 32 years**

** using 30 days in a month

Decimal Day

A Decimal Day has 100,000 seconds which is approximately 1.2 Gregorian days.

Like Unix Time, the Decimal Calendar (and thus the first Decimal Day) starts on 1 January 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC.

It is easy to spot a Decimal Day from any unix time value, the last 5 digits of the unix time are always 0 at the start of the day and always 99999 at the end of the day.

  • 1631400000 - 1631499999 (the 16314 day in the Decimal Calendar)
  • 1631500000 - 1631599999 (the 16315 day in the Decimal Calendar)

All sub-seconds belong to the previous second. So 1631499999.9999 is still day 16314.

A Decimal Day is used as the duration of Global Blocks in Virtual Vaccine, so events across time zones can be group together on the Fuzzy Blockchains for analysis. Everyone knows the duration covered by day 16314 no matter which time zone they are in.

Decimal Year

A Decimal Year that roughly correspond to a Gregorian year is defined as the duration between the start of the first Decimal Day in a Gregorian year to the start of the first Decimal Day of the following year.

Decimal Year Linux Time Duration Begin UTC End UTC
y21 1609500000-1640999999 2021-01-01 11:20:00 2022-01-01 01:19:59
y22 1641000000-1672599999 2022-01-01 01:20:00 2023-01-01 19:06:39
y23 1672600000-1704099999 2023-01-01 19:06:40 2024-01-01 09:06:39
y24 1704100000-1735699999 2024-01-01 09:06:40 2025-01-01 02:53:19
  • the "y" in front stands for year and must be included when specifying a Decimal Year.
  • the number behind is the Gregorian year minus 2000, so year 2100 will be written as y100.

So decimal year y21 is from decimal day 16095 to decimal day 16409 and decimal year y22 is from decimal day 16410 to decimal day 16259 etc.

  • All sub-seconds belong to the previous second. So 2022-01-01 01:19:59.9999 is still in y21.
  • When confusion is possible the words "Decimal Earth Year" and prefix "ye" should be used instead of just "Decimal Year" and "y".

Using Decimal Year is a great convenience but specifying the full duration is also supported e.g. 1609500000-1640999999 instead of y21.

Half Hour

It is easy to spot half hour intervals by looking at the last 3 digits of the unix time.

30 minute blocks (1800 seconds) will alway have the last 3 digits end in sequences of 800, 600,400, 200, 000 e.g. you can tell the unix timestamp 1631406800 is at the half-an-hour boundary by seeing that it has 800 at the end.

5

Simple Time Zone Format

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)"s standard Time Zone Names uses characters that are NOT compatible with many applications.

We have designed a Simple Time Zone Format to be used to achieve universal compatibility across all computing systems and applications. For example, for use with APIs that have conflicting characters, for use as filenames across different file systems etc.

1. Traditional Time Zones

Traditional Time Zone Names have 2 parts (Area and Location) separated by the first / character in the name:

Area Part / Location Part
e.g.

  1. Australia/Sydney
  2. Asia/Hong_Kong
  3. America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
  4. Etc/GMT+10

There are currently 11 possible Areas in the Area Part:
Africa, America, Antarctica, Arctic, Asia, Atlantic, Australia, Etc, Europe, Indian, Pacific.

Note the timezone database keeps on updating, as at 2013-02-15, the latest version is 2022g.

2. Simple Time Zones

To get the Simple Time Zone Format, the standard Time Zones Names are transformed in the following way:

  1. make all lowercase
  2. extract first 3 characters from the Area Part (in front of first /)
  3. if there are more / in the Location Part (behind first /) then extract first 3 characters after each /
  4. for the last / in the Location Part keep all characters after the / (no need to extract characters)
  5. remove all NON a-z 0-9 characters from Location Part (behind first /)
  6. concatenate the resulting Area and Location parts

For examples the same 4 time zones above now become:

  1. aussydney
  2. asihongkong
  3. ameargbuenosaires
  4. etcgmt10

Simple Time Zone format does NOT support obscure Non 2-part Time Zones (those without the / character).