Clock Synchronization

Clock synchronization is the discipline of keeping every machine in a distributed system agreed on what time it is, using protocols such as NTP for millisecond accuracy and PTP for sub-microsecond. It sounds like plumbing and is actually a correctness requirement: two records stamped by two machines whose clocks disagree by 200 milliseconds cannot be ordered, and a sequence you cannot order is a sequence you cannot reason about.

For a globally distributed network this is the property everything else leans on. If each edge node stamps event time against its own drifting clock, a record from Singapore and a record from Frankfurt are not comparable, every cross-region latency figure is fiction, and a backtest run on the history inherits the error without ever surfacing it. One disciplined reference clock across the network is what makes global ordering hold and what makes a published latency number auditable.