[VoIP] DST change in Windows

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,
I'm assuming here that the way webmail services calculate timestamps is to
have a clock at their end, most likely synchronized with an atomic clock via
NTP, that they use for the basis for all timestamps. Then, they take into
account the timezone the user has set in their profile, and use that to
generate the timestamp. This way, the user's own clock isn't used at all, so
incorrect timestamps won't be generated from a user's maladjusted clock.
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steph Kerman" <stfkerman at jps.net>
To: "Voice Over IP Tandem for Analog Switches" <voip at ckts.info>
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [VoIP] DST change in Windows


> (Excerpts of Chad's message follows, full message below that)
>
> Chad Perkins wrote:
> > Steph, can you confirm if this message is properly "dated" ?
> Your message arrived moments ago bearing a 2:54 PM EDT timestamp. It is
> 3:15 PM EDT as I write this. The majority of the messages I am receiving
> have timestamps only a few minutes earlier than their arrival times
> except for those that are approximately an hour into the future, which
> are clearly incorrect. So it appears that my machine is properly
> synchronized with the real world.
>
> My interest in making people aware when their clocks are incorrect is
> that it helps make the messages appear in sequence in the inbox, making
> it much easier to follow a thread. When messages are 1 hour off it makes
> following a thread much more difficult because many irrelevant messages
> are interleaved between the messages of a given thread.
> > Failing to fix the DST definition WILL cause future failures of
> > correct time unless you plan on manually correcting the clock every
> > March and November for the rest of your life, or have some other
> > program sync the time all the time.
> Thanks for all the info.  I certainly think that TZEDIT is a
> preferable.  At the time I found out about the XP patch I searched the
> Microsoft site, found nothing, spoke with generally knowledgeable
> friends and was told that AFA they knew, MS was withdrawing support for
> the older systems and I should not expect to find a solution from MS.
> Accordingly I resorted to the manual method to deal with the immediate
> problem and soon discovered that the time zone needed to be fudged to
> get correct results.
>
> If there were no better solution, I personally would find bumping my TZ
> twice a year completely unobjectionable.  It's far less of a nuisance
> than resetting all the digital clocks that need to be spun 23 hours
> forward once a year.
>
> One question that came up which I have not gained any insight into is
> how, when you use Yahoo webmail or Gmail, those webmail servers
> determine the correct time for the logged-in user.  Anyone know?
> Playing with your local PC clock has no immediate affect on the
> timestamps on those messages.  Perhaps a reboot is needed for the
> webmail servers to see a new time.  SMTP/POP mail message timestamps are
> affected immediately when your TOD or TZ setting is changed.
>
> Steph
>
> Chad's message in full ahead ==>
>
> Chad Perkins wrote:
> > I appreciate the fact that Steph has played "time" monitor (DST and
> > otherwise) on a
> > number of lists. Having peoples clocks reasonably correct help the
> > list(s) run
> > smoothly. A lot of people, would be unaware that something was amiss,
> > myself
> > included, if Steph hadn't pointed it out (he caught me with a out of
> > whack clock
> > before on another list before the DST crap came to be).
> >
> > However,
> >
> > On 6 Apr 2007 at 15:47, Steph Kerman wrote:
> > [snip]
> >> One needs to turn off auto-adjustment by unchecking the box and if
> >> correcting manually one needed to bump the time zone and then correct
> >> the time setting.
> >> Steph
> >
> > Fix it, disabling DST is not the answer. There has been a MS tool called
> > TZEDIT.EXE that has been around since atleast windows 98 that "fixes"
> > this problem
> > without the MS "patch".
> >
> > There are two versions of TZEDIT, one for Windows 9x, one for
> > XP/2000/NT(?). So
> > there is no reason that anyone shouldn't be able to fix this problem.
> > I have used
> > TZEDIT, I believe successfully, on all of my machines both at work and
> > at home (XP
> > SP1, ME, 98SE, 95A and 95B none of which appear to be patchable).
> > Steph, can
> > you confirm if this message is properly "dated" ?
> >
> > Download the appropriate TZEDIT.EXE and run it (there is no installer).
> > Select your timezone.
> > Click Edit.
> > Set 'Start Day' to Second Sunday of March
> > Set 'Last Day' to First Sunday of November.
> > (leave/turn 'Automatically set DST on)
> > Click 'OK'.
> > Click 'Close' and you are done (assuming other aspects of your time
> > settings haven't
> > been already mucked up, in which case you'd have to undo that).
> >
> > Failing to fix the DST definition WILL cause future failures of
> > correct time unless you
> > plan on manually correcting the clock every March and November for the
> > rest of your
> > life, or have some other program sync the time all the time.
> >
> > While I am not an expert in this department, but I have been told that
> > NTP uses delta
> > UTC and thus relies on the client to correctly interpret the offset.
> > As such it is my
> > understand that using NTP won't fix this (but it would be accurately
> > "off" by an hour
> > one way or another).
> >
> > Chad
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