EH-Net

Did you know beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at:
2 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March
to
2 a.m. on the First Sunday of November.

This means to us in IT that there is all kinds of updates and patches needed for our infrastructure. Sounds like a lot of chat about nothing... But when you start thinking about it there could be a real impact. Lets see what kind of equipment might need updates:

Databases
Routers
Syslog servers
Time Clock software
Time sensitive encryption software/Applications
Switches
ATM (Banking Equipment)
PBX's
Voicemail
And many more types of equipment.

I work in a very large enterprise network and there is all kinds of rushes to see what our impact might be. Billing services have to be accurate on time and anything dealing with voice services has to also have the correct time. One good thing is that if your equipment uses NTP (Network Time Protocol) you just have to make sure your NTP server is updated correctly.

So do you thing you will be impacted by the DST change?

What have you done to perpair for the DST change?

Thanks,

Brian

Here is a link to DST http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html

What baffled me was that Microsoft included IE7 as a critical update, but DST fixes were optional. Not sure the reason behind it, but as of Feb 13th, DST became a critical fix and part of your High Priority Updates.

Anyone know what the reason was? Was there even one?

Don

I work for a big software company and these DST changes were, and continue to be, a nightmare. No only did we have to get over them hump of the original change, but we have to deal with it every time the change rolls around again. We have folks with fresh installs that have never put on the DST patches and we have others that have just waited out the time change until everything started working right again. Truly miserable.

The worst of it is that congress is supposed to evaluate the supposed energy savings of the change and reverse it if the savings are not significant (they aren't).