Patent ID: 8451867

Claim:
A method for establishing transmit timestamps to be inserted into outgoing packets, the method comprising: creating a first outgoing packet; requesting current time from a hardware clock; inserting a sum of the current time and a correction term associated with an estimated latency into the first outgoing packet as the transmit timestamp; placing the first outgoing packet with the transmit timestamp in an outbound queue; monitoring network traffic flowing through a media independent interface (MII) channel to detect the first outgoing packet; triggering the hardware clock to latch a time-of-departure of the detected first outgoing packet; updating the correction term associated with an estimated latency based on the latched time-of-departure; creating a second outgoing packet; requesting current time from a hardware clock; inserting a sum of the current time and the updated correction term into the second outgoing packet as the transmit timestamp; and placing the second outgoing packet with the transmit timestamp in the outbound queue.