Performance analysis of system time parameters is important for the development of parallel and distributed programs because it provides a means of estimating program execution times and it is important for scheduling tasks on processors. Measuring time intervals between events occurring in different nodes of clusters of workstations is not a trivial task due to the absence of a unified clock view. In this work we propose a different approach to measure system time parameters and program performance in clusters with the aid of the parallel port present in every machine of a cluster. Some experimental values of communication delays using the MPI library in a cluster are presented and the efficiency and precision of the proposed mechanism are analyzed.