Operations in Critical Infrastructures rely more and more on assured and accurate time distribution. Precise time-stamping of high frequency events or transactions is a key enabler for monitoring, security and performance measurement of all kind of transaction-based operations. Time and Frequency synchronization quality has a direct impact on reliability and performances of multiple civilian and governmental communication systems.

As a way to meet the demand for quick infrastructure growth, including efficiency and scalability improvement, network-based time distribution is seeing strong adoption across all infrastructure industries. Interoperability requirements have led to the standardization of different network-time protocols, enabling time-transfer accuracy improvement from milli-second level (NTP), to sub-micro-second (PTP, IEEE1588). They also lead to supporting higher speed network interfaces, with the on-going migration from 1Gb Ethernet to 10 Gb Ethernet, or faster, interfaces.

A more recent standardized protocol, White Rabbit, now provides even more accurate time-transfer accuracy, down to the sub-nano-second level, in order to ensure a common and shared timescale over distant facilities.

Staying true to SecureSync’s strong modularity, the 1204-58 and 1204-59 WROX Option Cards introduce a new level of network-time distribution. They offer, respectively, 1 Gb Ethernet and 10 Gb Ethernet interoperability for NTP, PTP, and White Rabbit time distribution. These cards also preserve the wide range of options available with SecureSync, including oscillator, timing interface option cards, and power supply.