Measurement of Drift and Jitter of Network Synchronized Distributed Clocks

We propose a measurement setup for simultaneous measurement of drift and jitter of network synchronized distributed clocks using only off-the-shelf components. A network interface card with hardware timestamping capability and a local GPS-synchronized PTP grandmaster combined with appropriate post-processing enable absolute time measurement with sub-microsecond accuracy. The setup is explained in detail and its use exemplified by a 34 day measurement campaign. By polling a selection of globally distributed, GPS-synchronized NTP servers, delay asymmetry measurements were enabled. A detailed analysis of results illustrates the time-variant statistical properties of the jitter.