Minneapolis, Minn — August 2, 2010 — Network Instruments, a worldwide leader in network and application management, today announced that its Observer platform now ensures packet timestamp accuracy within 150 nanoseconds. The new Observer GPS Time Synchronization System uses GPS satellites to manage the timestamps of packets travelling globally between several Network Instruments appliances.

With next generation trading platforms and financial systems pushing to maximize transaction times down to the nanosecond-level, monitoring accuracy is essential for identifying microburst issues and where bottlenecks occurred.

Traditional forms of monitoring fail to guarantee this level of accuracy. Typically, network teams rely upon Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize the clocks on all the devices connected to their network to International Atomic Time. Because of network latency and hardware issues, NTP is typically accurate to only within 30 milliseconds. Even in the best cases, NTP accuracy is only within 10 milliseconds.

“In environments where millions of dollars can be lost in a split-second, our customers require extreme granularity and accuracy,” said Brad Reinboldt, product marketing manager for Network Instruments. “The latest trading platforms, for example, require latencies of less than 5 milliseconds and very low levels of packet loss. On a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network, a 100 millisecond microburst could cause thousands of transactions to be lost or significantly delayed. Without this level of monitoring accuracy, it would be impossible to correctly diagnose the cause or optimize the system.”

Each Observer GPS Time Synchronization System provides all necessary hardware to achieve precise timing and supports up to 15 monitoring devices.