synchronous clock frequency present at each compute node making up the desired secure network when multiple clocks run at precisely the same frequency it is said that they are synchronized or synchronous any two or more individual counters clocked by a synchronous frequency have the property that over a given time interval the count difference for all the counters will be identical that is if one of the counters has moved forward during a particular time interval by a certain number of counts all the other counters clocked by the same frequency will also have moved forward by the exactly identical number of counts if the counters are not clocked by a synchronous frequency the count differences will not be equal stated in an alternative way if the count difference between the any two counters clocked by the same frequency is zero at the beginning of the interval the difference will still be zero at the end of the interval similarly if the difference between the numbers counted by two counters clocked by the same frequency at the beginning of the interval is a non zero number the difference will remain that exact same non zero number in general then the count difference for.