Whereas daylight saving usually finishes on the last weekend in March it has been extended this year, in the eastern states that observe the time change, until Sunday April 2 (at 3am clocks go back one hour.)

Microsoft Windows users were issued a patch from the software giant to cope with the extension of daylight savings for a week until April 2, while mid-range and Linux systems require manual configuration to maintain the correct time.

However, keeping an organization's network temporal during this year's sporting spectacle may vary from simple to overly complex, according to Tweed Shire Council's systems supervisor Marcus Armour.

Armour has architected the network such that all Windows desktops and servers synchronize with a dedicated time server using the network time protocol (NTP), eliminating the need for patching.

"Our architecture is managed centrally from a server and clients sync with that server internally with NTP," Armour said. "We've taken control of that away from clients for these situations."