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Each machine can read time from its own hardware clock, but those clocks do not stay aligned. Network Time Protocol (NTP) tries to bring the clocks together, but it cannot eliminate the problem.

Hardware clocks drift apart, and NTP synchronization can reduce but never eliminate the misalignment. ✦ AI generated

Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · 2026-07-23 · original ↗

Each machine can read time from its own hardware clock, but those clocks do not stay aligned. Network Time Protocol (NTP) tries to bring the clocks together, but it cannot eliminate the problem.

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✳ Network Time Protocol

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Mechanism · 1

On a single computer, every event can be measured against one clock, so the order of the events is never in doubt. However, a distributed system, where work is spread across many independent machines, lacks a shared reference.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 95%

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explains mechanism → If events on different machines are ordered by comparing timestamps, a small difference in the wrong direction can change the result.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter explains mechanism → An update that happened later can be discarded in favor of an earlier one, because clock differences gave the earlier write the larger timestamp, and the newer data disappears with no error raised.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter explains mechanism → Logs gathered from several machines can place an effect before its cause, which makes tracing a problem much harder.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter explains mechanism → An operation that depends on a correct order, such as granting access only after the change that authorized it, can act on stale information.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter