Is the Internet's time wrong? NIST warns servers may have lapsed due to a power outage
Round robin DNS protected many users from localized time failures
· TechRadarNews By Efosa Udinmwen published 24 December 2025
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- NIST confirmed several public time servers lost their atomic reference signal
- A generator failure interrupted the distribution of America’s primary atomic time scale
- Some NIST servers responded normally while quietly serving inaccurate timestamps
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued an alert that some of its public time servers may be unreliable.
The advisory focuses on a defined set of hosts, including multiple time-x-b.nist.gov addresses and the authenticated ntp-b.nist.gov service.
According to NIST, these systems may still respond to network requests while no longer referencing a valid atomic time source.
What failed at the Boulder facility
To avoid spreading incorrect data, the agency said it may temporarily take some of the affected hosts offline.
NIST traced the problem to its Boulder, Colorado campus, where a prolonged utility power outage disrupted operations.
The outage occurred during high winds that damaged power lines and triggered safety-related shutdowns.
Although backup power systems were in place, a downstream generator failure interrupted the atomic time scale distribution that feeds the Internet Time Service.
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