Enterasys Technical Notification Regarding Changes to US Daylight Savings Time Observance.
With the signing of the Energy Act of 2005, the United States is changing the observance of Daylight Savings Time. With this change, systems that rely on time will be affected, and mitigation is required to ensure that other systems requiring accurate time information remain unaffected by this change. Enterasys has been actively reviewing its products and offers to its customers the following information.
Table 1: Summary of Changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST)*
|
Prior to 2007 |
Year 2007 and After |
Start |
1st Sunday in April |
2nd Sunday in March |
End |
Last Sunday in October |
1st Sunday in November |
*The Energy Policy Act of 2005 also retains the right of Congress to revert back to the previous schedule.
As of March 11, 2007, affected devices that are not changed could display and log the time exactly 1 hour off from the actual time during US DST periods e.g., the system time will be one hour early for three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall. This change could have a significant impact on network monitoring and event correlation activities.
For security-related devices, where logs are captured, correlated, and stored for future reference, this time change could render them incorrect for many situations. For events that receive immediate attention, the incorrect timestamps may not be an issue; however historical event analysis and reporting would be affected.
Affected Systems
All Enterasys Networks hardware and software products are affected by this change. Enterasys has compiled a list of the products and resolutions for each in our Enterasys Knowledge Base Article ent22257. As information may be updated and potentially new products added, we urge you to check back to this article as it will be updated as new information becomes available. If you have any questions regarding this information, we urge you to contact your Enterasys representatives if you have any questions.
The following table provides a summary of affected systems, their individual Knowledge Base Identifiers and summary of corrective actions.
Table 2: Affected Systems
Enterasys Product |
Knowledge Base ID |
Notes |
Matrix N-Series |
Fixed in upcoming firmware release. Work around CLI command available |
|
Matrix E1 |
Fixed in upcoming firmware release. Work around CLI command available |
|
Matrix X-Series |
Fixed in upcoming firmware release. Work around CLI command available |
|
SecureStack C3/C2/B3/B2/A2 |
Work around CLI command available or use of NTP server |
|
RoamAbout Wireless Access Point RBT-4102 & RBT3K-xG |
No DST awareness. Clock obtained from Time Server or manually adjusted during DST |
|
RoamAbout Wireless Switch |
Fixed in upcoming software release. Manual workaround available. |
|
NetSight Product Suite |
Patch available via Support Site |
|
Enterasys Sentinel |
Patch available via Support Site |
|
Dragon Intrusion Defense |
Patch available via Support Site |
|
Dragon Network Defense |
Patch available Feb 19 via |
|
X-Pedition Router (SSR) |
Work around CLI command available |
|
X-Pedition Security Router (XSR) |
Clock obtained from Time Server |
|
Matrix C1 |
No DST awareness. Clock obtained from Time Server or manually adjusted during DST |
|
SmartSwitch 1st/2nd/3rd Gen products |
SNMP-based workaround available |
|
Vertical Horizon |
No DST awareness. Clock obtained from Time Server or manually adjusted during DST |