Netnod supports PTS recommendations on robust time and frequency for Sweden
Stockholm, 15 January 2021 - The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) has issued a report related to the time and frequency needs of organisations operating across Swedish society.[1] The report is a response to a request from the Swedish Government that asked PTS to look at the distribution of time and frequency in Sweden.[2] PTS has stated:
To make Sweden more resilient, the national system for robust and traceable time and frequency should be made available to more actors in the society. This is proposed by The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) in a report to the government.[3]
Previously, the focus of such recommendations has been ISPs and other providers whose services fall under the Swedish implementation of the Electronic Communications Directive. The new PTS recommendations go further and state that organisations across a variety of sectors including, for example, energy, medical and finance, should also have access to robust, high accuracy time and frequency services.
"Netnod fully supports these PTS recommendations,” said Patrik Fältström, Technical Director and Head of Security, Netnod. "We are seeing an increasing need across all sectors of society for the best possible time and frequency services. Netnod is ready to support this development by providing the relevant information and services to support organisations working across all sectors of society.”
Netnod’s time and frequency services, partly funded by PTS, include a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) service for systems that need the highest levels of accuracy. Netnod’s PTP service is delivered over a dedicated fibre and offers a robust, reliable and highly accurate source for time and frequency. For mission-critical services, multiple sources of time and frequency are essential to ensure redundancy. PTP is used today by industries ranging from banking and financial services to telecommunications, transport and the energy sector.
Netnod also provides a free Network Time Protocol (NTP) service that uses a distributed timescale on multiple, autonomous sites throughout Sweden to provide time over IPv4 or IPv6. The time is traceable to the official Swedish time UTC(SP). Each site has full redundancy with multiple servers, caesium clocks, and FPGA boards providing an extremely fast hardware implementation of NTP.
Netnod’s NTP service is one of the first in the world to offer Network Time Security (NTS), a protocol Netnod has been instrumental in developing in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Netnod has worked on all stages of NTS development from the IETF standard to software and hardware implementations at client and server levels.
Netnod provides NTP, NTS and PTP services offering a robust, reliable and highly accurate source for time and frequency. More information about these services is available at: https://www.netnod.se/time-and-frequency
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Förutsättningar för att tillgängliggöra det nationella systemet för spårbar tid och Frekvens, PTS, PTS-ER-2020:33, 2021-01-12, https://pts.se/globalassets/startpage/dokument/icke-legala-dokument/rapporter/2021/forutsattningar-for-att-tillgangliggora-det-nationella-systemet-for-sparbar-tid-och-frekvens-pts-er-202033.pdf
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PTS ska utreda förutsättningarna för samhällsviktiga funktioner att fysiskt anslutas till svenska atomur, Regeringskansliet, I2020/01811/D, 2020-06-25, https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2020/06/pts-ska-utreda-forutsattningarna-for-samhallsviktiga-funktioner-att-fysiskt-anslutas-till-svenska-atomur/
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Det nationella systemet för spårbar tid bör få användas av flera aktörer, PTS, 2021-01-14, https://pts.se/sv/nyheter/internet/2021/det-nationella-systemet-for-sparbar-tid-bor-fa-anvandas-av-flera-aktorer/
About Netnod
Netnod provides critical infrastructure support ranging from interconnection services and Internet Exchanges to time services, DNS services and root server operations. With a worldwide reputation for its services and the expertise of its staff, Netnod ensures a stable and secure Internet for the Nordics and beyond. Established in 1996 as a neutral and independent Internet infrastructure organisation, Netnod is fully owned by the non-profit foundation TU-stiftelsen (Stiftelsen för Telematikens utveckling).