# A note on timezones and timestamps

If the clients run `syslog-ng`, then use the ISO timestamp, because it includes timezone information. That way you do not need to adjust the `recv-time-zone()` parameter of `syslog-ng`.

If you want to output timestamps in Unix (POSIX) time format, use the `S_UNIXTIME` and `R_UNIXTIME` macros. You do not need to change any of the timezone related parameters, because the timestamp information of incoming messages is converted to Unix time internally, and Unix time is a timezone-independent time representation. (Actually, Unix time measures the number of seconds elapsed since midnight of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) January 1, 1970, but does not count leap seconds.)

Last modified June 27, 2023: [Moves content/docs to content/ to shorten output url (a5fcf1ed)](<https://github.com/axoflow/axosyslog-core-docs/commit/a5fcf1ed4956f586bc12af2b775e10aa75c1e630>)