System and methods for computer clock synchronization

Abstract

A clock synchronization system and methods including an algorithm, or protocol, that synchronizes to any source of time without the need of estimating frequency errors and only performing frequency adaptions. Specifically, a clock synchronization protocol synchronizes networked nodes without explicit estimation of the clock skews and steep corrections on the time. The algorithm is guaranteed to converge even in the presence of timing loops which allow different clients to share timing information and even collectively outperform individual clients when the time source has large jitter.