In
telecommunications
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...
, a drift is a comparatively long-term change in an attribute, value, or operational parameter of a
system
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...
or equipment. The drift should be characterized, such as "diurnal
frequency drift" and "output level drift." Drift is usually undesirable and unidirectional, but may be bidirectional, cyclic, or of such long-term duration and low excursion rate as to be negligible.
Federal Standard 1037C
/ref>
Drift is also common in pseudo-synchronised streaming applications, such as low-latency audio streaming over TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
. Normally both ends of a streaming connection would stay in-sync with a master clock but TCP/IP does not provide this 'master clock' mechanism. Therefore, applications running fixed clocks will drift apart over time and glitch
A glitch is a short-lived technical fault, such as a transient one that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among pl ...
es will occur. This is usually fixed by controlling jitter
In electronics and telecommunications, jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock signal. In clock recovery applications it is called timing jitter. Jitter is a signifi ...
or drift, by slightly altering the clock speed at one end of the connection.
See also
* Clock drift
Clock drift refers to several related phenomena where a clock does not run at exactly the same rate as a reference clock. That is, after some time the clock "drifts apart" or gradually desynchronizes from the other clock. All clocks are subject to ...
References
Synchronization
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