[AusNOG] Q about time zones especially UTC

[Mark Smith]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Joseph Goldman <joe at apcs.com.au>
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Cc: 
> Sent: Tuesday, 20 November 2012 9:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Q about time zones especially UTC
> 
> Seconded on UTC. If not UTC, at least a uniformed timezone, but will be easier 
> to work with UTC. Some would argue actual timestamps in the sense of the seconds 
> from the linux epoch, but i've personally never been a huge fan of TIMESTAMP 
> fields over DATETIME fields (when talking MySQL data types).
> 
> As you say, Transaction mapping etc can be quite annoying when working with 2 
> different timezones, especially if each transaction has been saved as it's 
> local timezone, and you have to convert from +10 to -6 or something.
> 
> It is much easier to store everything UTC and as stated, display it to local 
> region where applicable as their local time. This also makes things like DST 
> easier to deal with also.
> 

Having had to deal with a number of timezone changes in recent years (and in SA, there is also the problem of the 1/2 hour increment timezone, sometimes not supported on equipment), I'm getting tempted to start advocating using UTC as the timezone as well. There are dual timezone watches out there that support UTC (GMT) as a second zone.

http://www.larrybiggs.net/mirror/gmt/gmt24.htm


> On 20/11/12 8:50 PM, Martin Barry wrote:
>>  $quoted_author = "Alex Samad - Yieldbroker" ;
>>>  So what do ISP, Tier 1,2 providers (people who operate in multiple time
>>>  zones) use ?
>>  UTC.
>> 
>>  Store timestamps as UTC in as many places as possible, if not everywhere.
>>  You still might hit issues with leap seconds but not daylight savings or
>>  other fun.
>> 
>>  Do the translation to local time in the presentation layer of any interface
>>  used by humans.
>> 
>>  cheers
>>  Marty
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  AusNOG mailing list
>>  AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
>>  http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
> 
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>