What is network latency, and why does it matter?
Network latency is a measurement of two times: the time required to send a packet from your computer to the time server, and the time required to send a packet from the time server back to your computer. These two times added together are round-trip network latency (or just “latency” for short in this description). Each Network Time Protocol (NTP) packet contains timestamps that are used to compute the exact time that your PC needs. But the round-trip time is required to compute the true time, and the larger the latency, the more uncertainty that is introduced into the result. This means that more NTP packets may be required to hone in on the true time, and it will take even longer to gradually adjust to the correct time. Because of limitations in the Internet, only the round-trip time can be measured. The round-trip time is assumed (for lack of any other information) to consist of half of the time is in sending the packet and half of the time in receiving it. However, packet routing t
