A temporal order resolution algorithm in the multi-server time stamp service framework

This paper describes solutions to resolve chronological orders of time stamps issued by multiple time stamp authorities (TSAs). The communication, computation, and storage overhead to provide such a service is considerably low. The correctness of the proposed algorithm is proved and the worst-case computation bound is also derived. The proposed resolution algorithm and the supporting "cross reference mark" server strategy can be applied in a multi-server timestamp service (TSS) framework with trusted or distrusted servers to obtain deterministic time stamp comparison results.