Patent ID: 8724615

Claim:
A method of creation of a system master timer, wherein the system master timer is usable to provide a system time reference for a plurality of network devices, the method comprising: creating the system master timer based on a timer interrupt and a high-resolution timer having a resolution greater than a timer interrupt resolution, resulting in the system master timer having a higher resolution than a timer interrupt resolution, determining a first value of the high-resolution timer at the start of a synchronization event that is triggered by the timer interrupt; determining a second value of the high-resolution timer, the second value being the receipt time when a master device receives a signal with timing information from a slave device; determining an elapsed time for a number of periods of the timer interrupt; and calculating an adjustment of the system master timer from the elapsed time and the difference between the first value and the second value, wherein the system master timer is a persistent timer, wherein a persistent timer is a timer that persists over a plurality of synchronization events.