The time and date used by all devices connected to a site are synchronized automatically, preventing errors from manual time entry and clocks that become inaccurate over time. Network-wide time management ensures that scheduling, trending, audit trailing, data collecting, time-stamping of alarms, and other functions requiring accurate time management use the same time and date consistently for all system operations. Because the Site Director is the master time keeper for all engines and servers on a single site, all of these devices are assumed to use the same time zone for all time-rated functions.
For network-wide time synchronization, the engine or server acting as Site Director is the time server for the entire site. All other devices are time clients because they receive the time from the Site Director. The Site Director can be configured to use three different methods of time synchronization: Unicast Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) (also known as Microsoft Windows time synch), Multicast SNTP, or BACnet time synch. The Site Director can also be configured to synch its time from an external website.
New multi-time zone enhancements allow you to schedule events using local machine time management instead of calculating the Site Director time in relation to the device hosted in a different time zone.