A method establishes an improved clock topology for a computation system, where the computation system is a network of nodes, and where multiple nodes are capable of being a grandmaster clock source. The method includes sequentially selecting each selectable node as an acting grandmaster node, the acting grandmaster node sending announce messages, each node with a determinative communication requirement extracting topology information from the announce messages. The above steps are repeated with another node until each selectable node has been an acting grandmaster. The method then includes selecting the clock source based on the best clock topology for the set of nodes with determinative communication requirements.