Patent ID: 6957357

Claim:
A method for removing the effect of clock skew between data processing systems, comprising: making delay measurements between two data processing systems connected by a network; forming a set of data points, wherein each data point in the set of data points comprises a time and a delay measurement for the respective time; finding a convex hull of the set of data points, wherein the convex hull is bounded by a number of line segments; selecting a one of the line segments that optimizes an objective function; extrapolating the one of the line segments to obtain an affine function; and removing the effect of clock skew between the two data processing systems as characterized by the affine function, wherein the one of the line segments is selected so that the sum of the vertical distances between each of the set of data points and a line containing the one of the line segments will be minimized, and further wherein selecting the one of the line segments includes: calculating an arithmetic mean of x-coordinate of all of the set of data points; and selecting a one of the line segments that contains a point whose x-coordinate is equal to the arithmetic mean.