When I logged into an old Cisco 2950 network switch today and checked the time on the switch, I found the date was July 29, 1993 rather than January 1, 2022.

Hoggle>show clock
*23:47:16.884 UTC Thu Jul 29 1993
Hoggle>

A show clock detail command revealed there was no time source set for the switch.

Hoggle>show clock detail
*23:49:39.464 UTC Thu Jul 29 1993
No time source
Hoggle>

To set the time, I turned on the ability to enter privileged commands with the enable command.

Hoggle>enable
Password:
Hoggle#

I set the date and time to the current Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) values with the clock set command. You can find the current UTC time at Current UTC, Time Zone (Coordinated Universal Time).

Hoggle#clock set 02:47:10 jan 2 2022
Hoggle#show clock
02:47:20.163 UTC Sun Jan 2 2022
Hoggle#

The format of the command is clock set [hh:mm:ss] [month] [day] [year] with the following permissible values:

1. hh:mm:ss - Specifies the current time in hours in military format, aka 24-hour clock format, minutes, and seconds. So the value for hours can range from 0 to 23 while the values for minutes and seconds can range from 0 to 59.
2. month - Specifies the current month using the first three letters of the month name. The range is from Jan (January) to Dec (December).
3. day - Specifies the current day of the month from 1 to 31
4. year - Specifies the current year as a 4-digit year. The range is from 2000 up to 2037.

You may prefer to have the time displayed in your local time. This switch is in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States (you can see the current time for U.S. time zones at UNITED STATES TIME ZONES), so the local time is currently 5 hours behind UTC time. To display the time in the local time zone, I entered the configure terminal command to enter the Global Configuration context and then specified the timezone as EST and indicated it is minus 5 hours from UTC time.

Hoggle#configure terminal
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Hoggle(config)#clock timezone EST -5
Hoggle(config)#

The format for the command is clock timezone [zone] [hours-offset] [minutes-offset]. The options for the command are as follows:

1. zone - The acronym of the time zone, which can be up to four characters in length.
2. hours-offset - The hours difference from UTC. The range is from -12 to +13.
3. minutes-offset - (Optional) The minutes difference from UTC. The range is from 0 to 59.

You can exit the Global Configuration context with Ctrl-Z. If you then issue the show clock command you should see the date and time matching your local time.

Hoggle(config)#^Z
Hoggle#show clock
22:17:01.987 EST Sat Jan 1 2022
Hoggle#

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