Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ucbvax.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!tcp-ip
From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip
Subject: The night the clocks stopped (again)
Message-ID: <8462@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 01:57:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8462
Posted: Tue Jun 25 01:57:36 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 05:13:00 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 29

From: mills@dcn6.arpa

Folks,

A violent electrical storm wandered by our offices late this afternoon about
21Z and killed several traffic lights, an Ethernet board, two radio clocks and
an unknown number of erroneous timestamps hiding all over the Internet. Our
WWV secondary clock began ticking again after the static crashes died down
several hours later about 02Z, but our old faithful WWVB primary clock didn't
tick until late evening after 03Z. Even now the GOES tertiary clock in our
next-door neighbor net remains unreachable (due dead Ethernet board). It was a
bad day for clockwatching.

Once again, my apologies to all our ICMP, UDP and TCP clockwatchers. Turns out
the only UPS in our building runs the cypherlocks and security monitoring
system. We are considering pilfering a few watts from it to run at least the
primary WWVB radio reference. The irony of such a heist from such a source is
too yummy to resist. Pun intentional.

From the DCN-GATEWAY log it is apparent that a good clock service is
moderately important to this community. However, our recent experience with
primary-power disruptions suggests other sites may wish to share their clocks
with the rest of us. All it takes is a WWV receiver (Heath GC-1000 - about
$300), a dipole slung over the nearest tree (out of the near-field radio hash
from the computers), a spare serial port and a cup of software. Season with
UDP and serve on your nearest gateway.

Dave
-------