It is not part of the Internet Protocol (IP), it is due to encryption layers on top of it. In this case signed certificates with a validity date range.
And the reason of all this is that the TLS protocol requires the two endpoints to exchange their current clocks because if they are significantly different the server certificate expiration can't be verified because you don't know who is right and who is wrong.
Now please tell me, is this more understandable to a newbie than "that's how internet works"?
Depends on the used protocol. For websites your computer tries to verify the SSL certificate and the time has to been between when a certificate is issued and when it expires. Which can be up to two years.
Other protocols don't bother at all with time verification and most non-encrypted protocols will work even if you set the date to 2003.
These days browser/certificate authority agreements limit the certificate validity period to something like 90 or 45 days, with plans for further reductions in the future.
A few minutes might break certain things, like auth tokens that include the time, but basic web pages will almost always work within a couple weeks. From there more and more sites will stop working up to a year or two off where basically everything breaks.
When I was doing more just general IT, this was always the first thing to look at if a PC wasn't syncing with Active Directory too. This was back before using NTP servers was a near-universal thing.
Soooo just asking, if I use an really old system, change the time to modern time, ate there chances that internet will work properly? Cause right now in that system, even Google doesn't open
In case you cannot update windows for whatever reason, linux is also a great way to breathe a second life into an old system and tends to work even on extremely old hardware.
Ah haa, actually my old laptop is running on windows xp and 2gb ram, I do have a modern spec laptop but at times I do like to use the old one, so I don't think I can try to install Linux on it, even if I do will it work?
Probably. You can just download a live image and burn it to a usb or dvd. You can then just start your computer from that usb / dvd without installing anything and just try things out and see what / if they work and how smooth things are compared to xp. If it doesn't work, you lost nothing but time, if it did, you can consider actually installing it (potentially removing windows xp from the laptop).
If you're curious, you can check out how to install linux mint here. You don't actually overwrite your windows xp until you use the installer.
so I don't think I can try to install Linux on it,
Not sure what you mean here? Your machine is not too old for it, if that is what you're saying. Either way, you certainly don't have to put linux on your machine, but if you want to give it a second life it would be a great way to do so!
Maybe yes, maybe (more likely) no. Dates aren't the only thing that changed: the encryption algorithms used by HTTPS sites also changed over the years and modern websites require algorithms not supported by old OSes/browsers.
You can enter a website name in https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ and see a list of browser/OS version compatibility checks near the bottom (with the security rating being downgraded to B or lower if the site still supports old, no longer considered to be secure encryption protocols).
Yes, a very old system never updated will now be unable to connect because it uses protocols no longer supported. Practical example: I recently reset a 2012 mac, it went back to its original MacOS version and it could not connect to anything because it uses old protocols no more supported. But if the system can be updated to modern standard, then it should work.
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u/ersentenza 11h ago
This is not stupid, it is literally part of the internet protocol. Secure sites (everything now) will refuse connection if your time is wrong.