Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system

The concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is examined, and is shown to define a partial ordering of the events. A distributed algorithm is given for synchronizing a system of logical clocks which can be used to totally order the events. The use of the total ordering is illustrated with a method for solving synchronization problems. The algorithm is then specialized for synchronizing physical clocks, and a bound is derived on how far out of synchrony the clocks can become.

# Distributed systems and fault tolerance # Computer Science # Network Time Synchronization Technologies # Simulation Techniques and Applications # Decision Sciences

Leslie Lamport (1978). "Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system". Communications of the ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/359545.359563