Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) synchronises the world and provides the unit of time, the SI-second. VTT MIKES, the National Metrology Institute (NMI) of Finland, maintains the Finnish realisation of Coordinated Universal Time, UTC(MIKE), based on atomic clocks.
Precise timekeeping is essential to today’s society, and it is of utmost importance that it can be measured as reliably as possible. That is why, in addition to the realisation and dissemination of the national time scale, we at VTT MIKES perform scientific research in time and frequency metrology. For instance, we are developing an optical single-ion atomic clock and study the use of optical telecommunication networks for the comparisons of distant clocks and for dissemination of highly accurate time.
Computer clocks can be synchronised with the national time in Finland maintained by VTT MIKES by using Network Time Protocol, NTP. The achievable uncertainty depends on network connections but it is around one millisecond at its best. VTT MIKES maintains NTP servers subject to charge for institutions and companies. We have four servers of the highest level (stratum-1): two of them are synchronised directly to MIKES atomic clocks and two to GNSS receivers. Moreover, we provide three public NTP servers that are locked to MIKES servers (time.mikes.fi, time1.mikes.fi and time2.mikes.fi). These servers are available free of charge for public use.
