Using Higher Stability Oscillators for NICs and CPUs

This work shows the value of using a high stability oscillator such as a TCXO (temperature compensated oscillator) or OCXO (oven controlled oscillator) in network interface cards (NICs) and/or central processing units (CPUs). This value can be expanded to switches and other types of network hardware. Different test scenarios using Precision Time Measurement (PTM) -simply PTP on the PCIe bus involving the device and the root complex-were used on customized hardware (a pair of NUC11TNH devices).