Method for establishing and maintaining a shared view of time in a peer-to-peer network

摘要

A shared concept of time, called “graph time,” is agreed upon by all nodes within a graph. Each node maintains its own local delta representative of a difference in the node's system clock and graph time. Upon connecting to a neighbor node in a graph, a node is sent graph time as perceived by the neighbor node. In accordance with an embodiment, the node assumes that the lag time in receiving the graph time from the neighbor node is one-half of the lag time between the request for the connection and the receipt of the graph time. Graph time as sent by the neighbor node is added to one-half of the total delay and the sum is subtracted from the node's system time to calculate the delta for the node requesting connection.