Improving Network Clock Synchronization by Marking Congestion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, backward-compatible in-network congestion marking method to significantly enhance clock synchronization accuracy in distributed systems, especially over multi-hop networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel congestion indication mechanism using standard header fields, implemented on P4 hardware, improving synchronization performance by over 80%.

Findings

Over 80% improvement in single-hop synchronization accuracy.

Traditional statistical filters' performance improved by 90%.

Congestion marking reduces clock offset error by 30% to 80%.

Abstract

Achieving consistent time across devices in distributed systems often involves exchanging timestamped messages over a network. Precise time synchronization is crucial for applications such as cellular networks, industrial automation, and transactional databases. However, delay variation in synchronization packets-often caused by congestion from competing traffic-degrades synchronization accuracy. Detecting whether a packet experienced congestion can help improve synchronization through filtering and statistical methods. We propose an in-network congestion indication and filtering mechanism for synchronization messages used in protocols such as the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Precision Time Protocol (PTP). Network devices mark packets that experienced queuing, allowing clocks to correct errors caused by varying delays. Our approach requires only simple changes at switches or routers, avoiding deep packet inspection or protocol modifications. The method is backward compatible, using standard but currently unused fields in IP, PTP, or NTP headers. We implement our method on a Tofino P4 target and demonstrate an improvement of over 80% in synchronization performance over a single hop. Moreover, we show that the performance of traditional statistical filters, such as min-RTT and median-delay, is improved by 90% over the one-hop hardware setup. We further demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method across multiple hops, both analytically and through simulation. Congestion marking improves the root-mean-squared clock offset estimation error by 30% to 80%, depending on network conditions and filtering techniques.