How to set time and date on RT-N66U?

[PrivateJoker]

@ PrivateJoker

The DST settings were not intuitive. I have set my NTP server to the region that I am in (UK). TBH, I could not even tweak the time using the GMT +1 setting (as the UK is on GMT +1).

It is still not as easy as it should be. I shall store (your) post #8 for future reference, many thanks.

DrT

Yes just getting an accurate time from the proper server won't be perfect unless it knows how to apply it to your region I guess. I see that under the "time zone" adjustment there are usually several cities in each time zone listed, I would guess that several selections for each zone are listed because different areas within each zone might apply their own policies regarding DST, etc?

I'm not sure if I already posted this, but now with the various Wi-Fi positioning systems out there (Google streetview's not so secret ulterior motive is to map the location of as many AP MACs in the world to true GPS lat/long as it take pictures, Apple iOS devices and Android devices also phone home constantly updating such info, and the Skyhook service, etc.) it's nice to just turn on a new computer out of the box and between Wi-Fi positioning and using an NTP server it knows the time, where you are, and what time zone to apply. This occurred to me last night as I unboxed a new MacBook. (zero button pushes needed for it know the proper time and time zone)

I don't know if there are open source APIs out of any such data, but I wouldn't be surprised that there are, or someone is working on assembling some (from Open Street maps, Wigle, or other), that such functionality could soon be built into router firmware.

The state of Indiana is often mentioned as an example in the US of completely whacky time zone rules, and has flipped various counties in and out of time zones and in and out of DST observation many times in the last 20 years. So I can see how some equipment can't even keep up with the legal changes, thus having an ability to manually finesse time zone and/or DST observation can be important.

That's great, but on a boat I have no internet uplink, but it's important that my network devices (gps, autohelm) agree on what time it is. Being able to quickly poke a button to do the update is important.

I'm going to speak for the small minority on here that don't know how an autohelm works , but I think citing high tech navigational aids as great examples of devices that automatically set the time in client devices is kind of an unfair advantage since GPS uses super accurate clocks to determine your position, it's pretty easy for it to also tell you the time exactly where you are. And many navigational aids have some kind of timekeeping built in to their design. Also, you can get clocks that run on GPS time just like you can get clocks that run on the world wide low freq RF "atomic clock" signals.

And all I did on my router was type in an NTP server and click "apply" and going from not knowing what time it was, to having it correctly in there took less than 50 seconds as you can see in my video I posted above, literally just "pushed a button."

It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

 

[Zirescu]

While I agree it would be nice to have an interface to manually update the time, it's probably just as many steps to enter it in at the command line. On the other side of things, other than having the system log show info that makes sense for trouble-shooting purposes why does having the time set correctly on the router matter? (Not judging, just curious). The router isn't providing time to any other devices on the network (unless you configured a time server on it), but without the RTC I wouldn't go that route. The GPS system will/should be using the time it gets from the satellite network.

 

[PrivateJoker]

While I agree it would be nice to have an interface to manually update the time, it's probably just as many steps to enter it in at the command line.

I think a good portion of NTP's worth (and having all of your devices on the network that can be configured to point at an NTP server, to do so) is not just initial clock setting, but also to mitigate/eliminate clock drift. . .it happens more than we're aware. That and in a perfect world co-ordinated DST, leap year, leap second adjustments is helpful.

On the other side of things, other than having the system log show info that makes sense for trouble-shooting purposes why does having the time set correctly on the router matter? (Not judging, just curious). The router isn't providing time to any other devices on the network (unless you configured a time server on it), but without the RTC I wouldn't go that route.

Merlin can probably add more clarity to this than I can, but for starters many things in the UI (firewall, parental controls, etc.) can be put on schedules that need date and time. And beyond its own OS files within the router, it's also many different kinds of servers on a network, many file systems (especially in a shared storage environment) can get corrupted if there is a device touching shared files with a time stamp that is way out of range. Also things like assigning permissions to use shared storage to different users/logins in some situations will shut down or refuse an otherwise perfectly good login if user Bob & user Tom are trying to use the SMB file share on router RTN66 and they're all in agreement on the date and time, but then on Bob's next login Bob's local OS says it's 5 years ago, you might have a problem. Who knows it might not actually be a problem in that simplistic example, but time/date irregularities across networks are a known huge PITA for creating some otherwise hard to track down problems.

And so many known spoofing attacks and outright hacks use bad date/time as a vector, our computers & browsers are pretty locked down to kick out conspicuously faked dates. HTTPS/SSL is decently fortified against this, this just happened when I tried to go to my bank with my clock set back a couple years.

So no, that bad date wasn't in my router, but large disagreements inside of a network might start setting off alarm or preventing certain kinds of activities.

 

[DrTeeth]

On the other side of things, other than having the system log show info that makes sense for trouble-shooting purposes why does having the time set correctly on the router matter? (Not judging, just curious).

Parental controls are the important thing for me here. Plus, having clocks set to the wrong time drives me NUTS .

 

[PrivateJoker]

Cool free iOS app that compares the time in your iOS device to different pools of NTP servers.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/emerald-time/id290384375?mt=8

 

[Planes]

Much omitted to save space

I'm going to speak for the small minority on here that don't know how an autohelm works , but I think citing high tech navigational aids as great examples of devices that automatically set the time in client devices is kind of an unfair advantage since GPS uses super accurate clocks to determine your position, it's pretty easy for it to also tell you the time exactly where you are. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

That's kind of my point. I have the hyper accurate time from my GPS, but no means of getting that time to the router, as the router only seems to want to get the time from the internet, it's already done trying to set the time by the time it starts to look at dhcp and allowing clients to connect. Even if I put the IP address for the GPS into the NTP radio, and then click on the ntp button, it still tries to load a page from the internet which it has no access to rather than trying to set the time according to the ip address that has been provided. Leaving the gps ip address in the routers ntp radio and rebooting the router does not result in the router having the correct time. I can sync my laptop to the gps, but can't in turn sync the router to my laptop.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Much omitted to save space


That's kind of my point. I have the hyper accurate time from my GPS, but no means of getting that time to the router, as the router only seems to want to get the time from the internet, it's already done trying to set the time by the time it starts to look at dhcp and allowing clients to connect. Even if I put the IP address for the GPS into the NTP radio, and then click on the ntp button, it still tries to load a page from the internet which it has no access to rather than trying to set the time according to the ip address that has been provided. Leaving the gps ip address in the routers ntp radio and rebooting the router does not result in the router having the correct time. I can sync my laptop to the gps, but can't in turn sync the router to my laptop.

In the big picture, I agree that time synchronization between an authoritative device on a network, and client devices, would/should be a nice feature. But, any client device that's on the network, should/could also just reach out to the same domain that a router is using for NTP.

Not at all trying to be dismissive, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around the example you're laying out and using marine navigation systems that may or may not have authoritative time servers built in are probably well outside the scope of Asus routers talk.

On a related note though, I did see this in the changelog on Asus's website for 3.0.0.4.374.720:

"6. Auto adjust time zone in internet setup wizard process" woohoo!

 

[RMerlin]

"6. Auto adjust time zone in internet setup wizard process" woohoo!

That doesn't work too well however. For me, it would set the timezone to GMT-4, while it should be GMT-5, with DST in effect.

 

[PrivateJoker]

That doesn't work too well however. For me, it would set the timezone to GMT-4, while it should be GMT-5, with DST in effect.

In theory, could something like this ever be implemented in the router to help get the info it needs?

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/

With or without info gleaned from Geo-IP info?

http://www.infosniper.net/

Obviously not a very pressing need, just throwing stuff out tere. . .

 

[RMerlin]

In theory, could something like this ever be implemented in the router to help get the info it needs?

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/

With or without info gleaned from Geo-IP info?

http://www.infosniper.net/

Obviously not a very pressing need, just throwing stuff out tere. . .

There is no need to. You can obtain it from the browser, you just need to take into account that DST might be in effect, and adjust accordingly.

 

[PrivateJoker]

There is no need to. You can obtain it from the browser, you just need to take into account that DST might be in effect, and adjust accordingly.

Yes that's an excellent point.

 

[DrTeeth]

My watch synchronises with an atomic clock every 24 hours (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL) - if only there were an easy(er) way to get that time into the router .

 

[PrivateJoker]

My watch synchronises with an atomic clock every 24 hours (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL) - if only there were an easy(er) way to get that time into the router .

Ya I have a radio clock too, they are pretty neat. In the US it's actually the NIST bureau that runs both the time.ntp.gov & the 60khz and other assorted radio clocks.

It appears bestowing routers with direct NTP servers (vs the round robin/redundant pools) has had some somewhat disastrous outcomes in the past:

http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/dlink/
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear-sntp/

And this is an interesting article explaining NTP in enterprise networks.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk869/tk769/technologies_white_paper09186a0080117070.shtml

And windows network time setting:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773263(v=ws.10).aspx#w2k3tr_times_tools_dyax

I feel like any PC I've had since XP has automatically used the Microsoft NTP and any Mac or Apple router has also just needed a time zone set at the most then it syncs with Apple's NTP server.

People in the US are also encouraged to use the navy's USNO time system, especially if you want the geographically closest server in your own NTP list. I found the NTP address for a military base 15mi from me. I'll probably stick with the NTP.org pools for the round-robining and redundancy though.

 

[stevech]

I've used NTP.org pools - no problems in years of use.

 

[PrivateJoker]

I've used NTP.org pools - no problems in years of use.

Same here, I'm going to try the slightly more geographic ones (they break the pools down into countries & regions).

The Cisco article I linked above talks about some of the problems with NTP/SNTP, why it's difficult (dangerous) on a corporate LAN to set the NTP up in certain ways and how some LANs can be set to communicate/propagate the info between NTP servers and devices but it's also sort of like HTTPS with a built in element of not trusting some things, and trusting others, etc. it's a very interesting article if you're hard core geek, so are the two examples of routers being made with sloppy code that effectively DDOSed a couple NTP servers and the networks they were on.

Also, GPS time is like 14 seconds back, I never knew that...but it sends a correction signal.

And you can actually make a voice call to NIST in Colorado to get its time(!) 1-303-499-7111 & USNO as well 202-762-1401. Crazy.

 

[DrTeeth]

Ya I have a radio clock too, they are pretty neat. In the US it's actually the NIST bureau that runs both the time.ntp.gov & the 60khz and other assorted radio clocks.

It appears bestowing routers with direct NTP servers (vs the round robin/redundant pools) has had some somewhat disastrous outcomes in the past: <snip>

OT: It's 'fun' running Linux and Windows on the same PC. The former expects the PC BIOS clock to be GMT and the latter to local time (or the other way around - it's been a while since I fixed the issue on my PCs).

 

[RMerlin]

OT: It's 'fun' running Linux and Windows on the same PC. The former expects the PC BIOS clock to be GMT and the latter to local time (or the other way around - it's been a while since I fixed the issue on my PCs).

Most distros should ask you at install time if your clock is set as GMT or not.

 

[PrivateJoker]

OT: In a very non-scientific endeavor I've found that the most accurate one step browser query for time & proper time zone & local DST adjustments is to google "time" from any HTML5 browser. It uses the HTML5 geolocation (IP address geolocation + whatever else is available in wifi & cellular location) looks up the UTC time and then apparently uses a google magic that other sources may not tap into and knows to treat your result w/ DST info I cannot find in other methods.

I was playing around to see if it could out smart other world clocks with its knowledge of place names and funky time zones and it correctly identified three different towns on three different Polynesian islands (that are principalities of France), and each on different time zones, and it got them all. It was also successful with sample towns in Indiana that neighbor other IN counties with incongruous time zones & DST rules.

 

[DrTeeth]

Wow PrivateJoker, a nifty trick indeed.

Thanks