Time is fundamental to how the Internet works. Cloudflare Time Services leverages our vast global network of servers to provide accurate, authenticated time as a service. Computers and network devices utilizing this service will be able to connect to the closest server on our network to synchronize their clocks.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is an Internet protocol designed to synchronize time between computer systems communicating over unreliable and variable-latency network paths. Cloudflare offers a free public time service that allows you to use our anycast network of 285 locations to synchronize time from our closest server. To use our NTP server, change the time configuration in your device to point to time.cloudflare.com.
Cloudflare’s time service will allow users to connect to our Network Time Protocol (NTP) server that supports Network Time Security (NTS), enabling users to obtain time in an authenticated manner. Anyone with a client supporting NTS can obtain secure time by pointing their client to time.cloudflare.com. If you would like to learn more, read our developer docs.
Reach out to time-services@cloudflare.com to join our mailing list for updates on our NTS client implementation.
Roughtime is a protocol that aims to achieve rough time synchronisation in a secure way that doesn't depend on any particular time server.
For many applications, accurate network time isn’t essential: it suffices to be within 10 seconds of real time, but security is paramount. This observation is the primary motivation behind Google’s Roughtime protocol, a simple protocol by which clients can synchronize their clocks with one or more authenticated servers while keeping inaccurate servers accountable.
Cloudflare is providing a free, high-availability, and low-latency authenticated time service that leverages our expansive network for increased robustness in Roughtime. Our service can be reached at roughtime.cloudflare.com:2002.
Read our blog for more information about Cloudflare's Roughtime Service.