Precision at the edge

As enterprises today digitally transform, the need for precise and secure time synchronization of their network infrastructure is critical. For many global businesses, including those within the financial services, online gaming, government, manufacturing, and media and entertainment sectors, Time as a Service is essential for meeting compliance requirements and maintaining precise time synchronization across the network to support seamless operations of their digital infrastructure.

Security vulnerabilities and complexities with installing traditional antenna-based GPS timing infrastructure solutions, as well as the cybersecurity risks that can arise from sourcing time from the internet, have created significant challenges for many latency-sensitive businesses that need to deploy time services with greater agility and without additional capital expense. To help businesses overcome these challenges, Equinix Precision Time is designed to deliver secure and reliable time as a service that supports network timing protocols such as NTP and PTP in a cost-effective way.

For companies looking to improve application efficiency and network agility and minimize reliance on the public internet and GPS antennas for time synchronization, Equinix Precision Time is a robust solution delivered via Equinix Fabric that allows organizations to bypass the public internet for secure and reliable time synchronization. Integration with Equinix Fabric further empowers Equinix Precision Time customers to tap into the rich digital ecosystems and seamlessly connect with other physical or virtual services available on the trusted Equinix platform.

Equinix Precision Time is a new edge service capability globally available on Platform Equinix that’s designed to help enterprises run critical applications more effectively and securely, including:

o   Online Gaming: E-Sports and online gaming sites that require precise time synchronization to ensure the chronological order of play in multiplayer games.

o   Financial Services: High-frequency trading platforms, banks and brokerages that require highly precise time to maintain an ordered sequence of transactions, and strict compliance with FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) and MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) for accurate timestamping of trades and transactions.

o   Media & Entertainment: Broadcasting enterprises that require accurate synchronicity between audio and video feeds to prevent “lip-sync” errors.

o   Government: Federal and government agencies that are required to have precise, secure and reliable sources of time services in order to maintain network synchronization of mission-critical networks.

o   Enterprise: IT network deployments that require network engineers to synchronize various servers, storage and network infrastructure equipment for precise time using NTP in order to access and time stamp logfiles necessary for identifying network security intrusions, performing network forensics and troubleshooting.

o   Latency-Sensitive Businesses: Dynamic applications that require real-world time values such as electronic medical records, point of sale transactions, multisite global software development, real-time data acquisition, energy metering and geological survey data collection.

Key benefits of Equinix Precision Time include:

o   Accurate – Provides microsecond-level precision for Precision Time Protocol customers with an SLA of 50 microseconds. For customers operating standard enterprise network infrastructure, Equinix Precision Time also offers support for the popular NTP protocol, providing the flexibility to choose the optimal time protocol that suits their organization’s operational needs.

o   Compliant – The service is in compliance with the time synchronization accuracy requirements of FINRA and MiFID II, which have SLA requirements of 100 microseconds for timestamping of applications. It is also compliant with the time synchronization accuracy requirements of SMPTE 2110 requirements. 

o   Reliable and Secure – Delivered over Equinix Fabric, customers can bypass the public internet to achieve more secure and reliable time synchronization across servers using private IP network connectivity.

o   Speed to market and CAPEX savings – Without incurring up-front capital costs, customers can use Equinix Precision Time Portal to configure and rapidly deploy the Equinix Precision Time service as Equinix manages and maintains a redundant stack of GPS Antennas, time servers with atomic clock holdover and grandmaster clocks.

Equinix Fabric is a software-defined interconnection service that allows any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company's infrastructure on Platform Equinix. As enterprise demands for ecosystem access, infrastructure performance and network agility increase, customers are choosing Equinix Fabric as their de facto interconnection standard for connecting their digital infrastructure globally across Platform Equinix.