Error: "Switch time and browser time are not in sync"

Symptom

The Web UI displays a yellow caution triangle in the top banner and an error dialog box with the following title:

Switch time and browser time are not in sync

The content of the dialog box indicates how many seconds the switch time is ahead of or behind the browser time, and states that the information displayed in the Web UI might not be accurate.

In addition, time series graphs on the Analytics page might be missing expected data, might have data shown with inaccurate times, or might display incorrect data.

Cause

The switch and the client from which you are viewing the UI are not set to the same time. For example:

  • The switch has been rebooted and the time has not been set correctly. For example, the switch could not reach its configured NTP server.

  • Instead of using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) with a time zone offset or getting the time from an NTP server, either the switch or the client is manually set to a different time.

Action
  1. Try clearing or resetting the web client browser cache.
  2. Ensure that the web client from which you are viewing the Web UI is set to a time zone based on UTC.

    For example, if your workstation is set to Eastern Standard Time (EST), and you want to use Pacific Standard Time (PST), change the time by setting the time zone instead of by manually resetting the time.

  3. Ensure that the switch is set to use NTP or to a time zone based on UTC time.
    • NTP synchronizes the time of day among a set of distributed time servers and clients to correlate events when receiving system logs and other time-specific events from multiple network devices. All NTP communications use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

      To show the NTP status, use the show ntp status command.

    • For information about configuring the switch to use NTP, see the Fundamentals Guide.

    After you configure the switch, clear the NAE data by entering the clear nae-data command from the manager context.

    For example:

    switch# clear nae-data
  4. If the switch is set to use NTP and there has been a significant clock change, clear the NAE data by using the clear nae-data command.

    For example:

    switch# clear nae-data