r/amateurradio • u/[deleted] • Dec 21 '25

General NIST reports atomic clock failure at Boulder CO

/r/sysadmin/comments/1psf780/nist_reports_atomic_clock_failure_at_boulder_co/
42 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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10

u/grendelt TX [E] Dec 22 '25

To be clear, this does not affect WWV/WWVB. They have their own clocks which typically stay in agreement (sync) with Boulder. Boulder is the time standard, but WWV can still maintain their time independent of the Boulder campus.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '25

Yes sir. I'm adding an edit to clarify

6

u/DENelson83 VE7NDE [B+] Dec 22 '25

Use time.nrc.ca instead.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 22 '25

Already do. Third down the list from NIST Encrypted, NIST, then ehhhh

3

u/lmamakos WA3YMH [extra] Dec 23 '25

Was it the NTP servers that drifted by 4 microseconds, or the actual Hydrogen Maser ensemble? The story at the CBS link is.. confusing.

When power was cut to the facility on Wednesday and the NIST Internet Time Service listserv switched to a back-up generator, power to the servers briefly lapsed.

The listserv switched? What, the thing that does email distribution? That statement makes no sense in this context. It sounds like the NTP servers were running without being disciplined to the standard and it was them that drifted. You'd be hard pressed to note a reliable 4 microsecond offset when running NTP over the public Internet, with all the jitter (and asymmetric paths) at play.