Network performance monitoring, analysis and remediation requires accurate timestamps of events that occur across a distributed network. Root cause analysis of network impairment or congestion depends more upon when certain events occurs in relation to other events, not necessarily on what time it is at any given point.

Traditional packet-based time distribution techniques are all too often incorrectly deployed, misunderstood, inaccurate, insufficient or unavailable for event timestamping. Time determination is an alternative technique that uses packet analytics in conjunction with network routing and topology information to centrally determine event timestamps. Distribution of time is not required across the network and indeed free running clocks are preferred.