Using NTP and Exchange Timestamps to Estimate Trading Delays

Summary

The document presents JavaScript utilities for obtaining a remote time reference from an NTP server and comparing a local clock with Binance Futures server time. The NTP function sends a UDP request, reads the server timestamp from the response, converts it to milliseconds, and returns the local current time instead when running in a virtual backtest environment. It returns no value if the response does not have the expected length.

The exchange comparison queries the server time several times, skips the first and last measurements when accumulating request duration, and uses half the average of the intervening durations as a rough latency adjustment. It then compares the adjusted local time with the exchange timestamp. These snippets illustrate clock synchronization and delay estimation relevant to high-frequency trading, but offer no measured accuracy or validation. Network delay, server response variation, local clock error, and the simplified latency assumption can all affect the estimate; the code is an example rather than evidence of reliable synchronization.

Key ideas

• An NTP request can provide a remote clock reference for timestamp comparison.
• The example falls back to local time in virtual backtests.
• The exchange delay estimate samples Binance server time and adjusts for part of the measured request duration.
• Network variability and local clock accuracy limit the reliability of the estimate.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.