
Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (1978) [pdf] - nottednelson
http://amturing.acm.org/p558-lamport.pdf
======
r0naa
This is a bit early for #ThrowbackThursday!

More seriously, if the topic is of interest to you, I recommend Tanenbaum's
book on Distributed Systems. In particular, the chapter 4 explains the
rationale behind vector, or logical, clocks using very down-to-earth examples.
I did not realize how time synchronization could be such a pain before reading
it.

More generally, Tanenbaum's books are always of really high quality. There are
maybe slightly outdated, but if you are looking to learn about the
fundamentals - it is a safe bet.

~~~
nottednelson
Thanks for the book rec! Something that moves from Lamport's short,
theoretical (but awesome) piece to concrete examples is exactly what I need.
Will check it out.

------
teeray
This paper and other interesting topics are covered in an introductory form
here: [http://book.mixu.net/distsys/single-
page.html](http://book.mixu.net/distsys/single-page.html) . There are also
great references to seminal papers and other interesting research.

------
mrcactu5
This very detailed discussion of clocks and synchronicity sounds oddly like
the discussion of clocks in special relativity and in quantum field theory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation)

------
bluejekyll
Lamport clocks are awesome. I've used them in the past in really affective
ways with data which needs to be synchronized, and you need to discover only
the data updates which you are missing. Lamport breaks this down into such a
simple method for tracking that in an elegant way.

------
macintux
Shameless self/conference plug: I'll be talking about logical clocks at
Midwest.io next month.

It's a new conference as of last year, was really impressed with it.
Organizers have been inspired by Alex Miller and Strange Loop.

------
la6470
I think it would be good if author explained why we cannot use a reliable NTP
server.

