Patent ID: 8902932

Claim:
A method in a network device within a network of network devices, the method comprising: the network device allocating a specific port on the network device; the network device receiving packets on an ongoing basis; for each of said packets, if the packet is a timing packet: a) the network device directing the timing packet to the specific port; and b) the network device receiving the timing packet back from the specific port, the timing packet having been adjusted to reflect a delay of said timing packet introduced by the network device; and the network device forwarding the packets; wherein the delay is calculated using at least: (i) a first time duration estimated as a time taken by the timing packet to pass from an input port of the network device to a point in an external timing packet processor, wherein the first time duration comprises a fixed delay D 1,fix component that is known, a traffic independent delay D 1,ind component, and a traffic dependent delay D 1,tdp component, and (ii) a second time duration estimated as a time taken by the timing packet to pass from a point in the external timing packet processor to an output port of the network device, wherein the second time duration comprises a fixed delay D 2,fix component that is known, a traffic independent delay D 2,ind component, and a traffic dependent delay D 2,tdp component; and wherein the delay is further calculated by: estimating the delay introduced by the network device using a mean of the traffic independent delay D 1,ind component of the first time duration, and a mean of the traffic independent delay D 2,ind component of the second time duration, and the fixed delay D 1,fix component of the first time duration, and the fixed delay D 2,fix component of the second time duration, and the traffic dependent delay D 1,tdp component of the first time duration, and the traffic dependent delay D 2,tdp component of the second time duration.