time and a precision range having the instantaneous time as its midpoint it will be understood however that other techniques can be used to identify process a and process b intervals which are to be used for synchronization also the instantaneous time value need not be the midpoint of a precision interval although as discussed above the precision is best when this is so however the analysis of the possible intersections of the two intervals to identify endpoints of the intersection intervals and the identification of an instantaneous time point will proceed substantially as above except for suitable alterations that satisfy the particular techniques used the present discussion will conclude with a description of the method of the invention as shown in the accompanying flowcharts fig7 is a flowchart showing the overall method of the invention initially in step 20 two times given in terms of an instantaneous time value and a precision range around that value are obtained as discussed above this is preferably done through the use of a pcs message exchange sequence such an exchange is briefly summarized in fig8 as discussed above in connection with fig1 process a sends a message at its time t u00b1 p process b later receives the message at a later time u u00b1 q and sends a.