Although IEEE 1588v2 can be used on a network that is not PTP-aware, the use of PTP-aware network elements (boundary clocks) within the packet-switched network improves synchronization performance by reducing the impact of PDV between the grandmaster clock and the slave clock. In particular, when IEEE 1588v2 is used to distribute high-accuracy time, such as for mobile base station phase requirements, then the network architecture requires the deployment of PTP awareness in every device between the Grandmaster and the mobile base station slave.
In addition, performance is also improved by the removal of any PDV caused by internal queuing within the boundary clock or slave clock. This is accomplished with hardware that is capable of detecting and time stamping the IEEE 1588v2 packets at the Ethernet interface. This capability is referred to as port-based time stamping.