If the time is off by that much after being powered off, this tells me two things:
- Your RTC battery is very likely dead. Should be simple to replace, it would be on the motherboard but then again accessing it might be a little tricky on a laptop
- NTP is probably not set up, or set up incorrectly. It should automatically sync the time on boot
An incorrect clock can absolutely cause network issues, so I would bet that’s what is causing you trouble
That said, I find it very hard to understand exactly what you are asking for, the post is rambly with a middle section about books that I couldn’t really understand even after 3 rereads.
I think what you are asking for is: