METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR DETERMINING OPTIMAL MESSAGES

This invention relates to timing message selection techniques that can be used in conjunction with a clock recovery mechanism to mitigate the effects of packet delay variation on timing messages exchanged over a packet network, particularly when seeking to synchronize the time of a clock in a slave device to that of a master clock. The selection techniques allow the identification of optimal or minimally-delayed timing messages which can subsequently be used in timing synchronisation. Embodiments of the invention provide techniques which identify optimal timing messages in both forward and reverse directions which are then processed to form composite timing messages which are used in a frequency estimation algorithm. Timing messages selected by the methods of the invention are particularly useful in phase synchronization between the master and slave clocks.