A method and apparatus useful for determining the accumulated error in a user terminal clock in a satellite communications system. The satellite communications system includes a gateway, a satellite with a known position and known velocity, and a user terminal having a deskew buffer clocked by a user terminal clock. The method includes the steps of computing the one-way signal delay between the satellite and the user terminal, computing a desired deskew buffer delay based on the computed one-way signal delay and a predetermined maximum value of said one-way signal delay, and computing the accumulated error in the user terminal clock based on the desired deskew buffer delay and the actual deskew buffer delay.