Broadcast engineers and media IT professionals, are you wondering if you have set up NTP properly on your servers and other devices? Take a look at my guide to NTP Best Practices in a Broadcast Facility for some practical advice.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is still the best way to synchronize computer clocks for non-real-time applications. For real-time synchronization, time code and, increasingly, Precision Time Protocol (PTP), are more appropriate. Even if you are using time code or PTP, your servers usually don’t synchronize their clocks to those signals. Because of the heavy reliance on synchronization in media applications, you need to be sure to deploy NTP properly. Fortunately, most media facilities are already in a good position to reliably use NTP because of their time code infrastructures....