P: Loss of internet connection and license

Thank you for all the details provided. However, I am sorry for disagreeing with you. The official article referenced by Mr. Tranberry only states that:

You must connect to the Internet when you want to install Adobe Creative Cloud apps, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Once the apps are installed on your computer, you don’t need an ongoing Internet connection to use the apps.

You can use the apps in offline mode with a valid software license for a limited period. The apps attempt to validate your software license every 30 days. You receive a reminder to reconnect to the Internet to validate your license:

These two paragraphs are simply either misleading or untrue at the moment. There is an ongoing debate on how the Adobe Creative Cloud licencing manager works when the internet connection is lost in an otherwise quality connection city area. In some circumstances, the application successfuly prevents offline work even if that happens to be a few-minutes drop out.

Link to the original discussion: https://forums.adobe.com/message/10810376#10810376

I have to point out that in what concerns me personally, I do have network time synchronization turned on. As far as I know, it is the Windows default setting and Dan's comment is the first time I am reading anywhere (unofficially from Adobe) I should do otherwise. Being a programmer myself, I totally understand that a time jiggle could occur in many circumstances and I agree that I would not notice even though my time indicator shows time with seconds. If, however, a time jiggle in the order of seconds or even minutes lasting a tiny moment can render a software installation unusable for the entire time of connection loss, it is a serius flaw in the software design by definition. It is understandable that time shifts in the order of days or even years hint the licence might be compromised but not necessarily so if it is a few-minute jiggle. Please note that for anyone trying to launch a Creative Cloud application when working offline, it is nearly impossible not to notice a shift of an hour or more the whole time the dialog keeps trying to connect to the server.

Thank you again for the time you have taken to engage in the topic. Hopefully Adobe will make their efforts to investigate the issue further.

Thank you for all the details provided. However, I am sorry for disagreeing with you. The official article referenced by Mr. Tranberry only states that:

You must connect to the Internet when you want to install Adobe Creative Cloud apps, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Once the apps are installed on your computer, you don’t need an ongoing Internet connection to use the apps.

You can use the apps in offline mode with a valid software license for a limited period. The apps attempt to validate your software license every 30 days. You receive a reminder to reconnect to the Internet to validate your license:

These two paragraphs are simply either misleading or untrue at the moment. There is an ongoing debate on how the Adobe Creative Cloud licencing manager works when the internet connection is lost in an otherwise quality connection city area. In some circumstances, the application successfuly prevents offline work even if that happens to be a few-minutes drop out.

Link to the original discussion: https://forums.adobe.com/message/10810376#10810376

I have to point out that in what concerns me personally, I do have network time synchronization turned on. As far as I know, it is the Windows default setting and Dan's comment is the first time I am reading anywhere (unofficially from Adobe) I should do otherwise. Being a programmer myself, I totally understand that a time jiggle could occur in many circumstances and I agree that I would not notice even though my time indicator shows time with seconds. If, however, a time jiggle in the order of seconds or even minutes lasting a tiny moment can render a software installation unusable for the entire time of connection loss, it is a serius flaw in the software design by definition. It is understandable that time shifts in the order of days or even years hint the licence might be compromised but not necessarily so if it is a few-minute jiggle. Please note that for anyone trying to launch a Creative Cloud application when working offline, it is nearly impossible not to notice a shift of an hour or more the whole time the dialog keeps trying to connect to the server.

Thank you again for the time you have taken to engage in the topic. Hopefully Adobe will make their efforts to investigate the issue further.

Thank you all for your replies, and Dan for all your details.

Thank you Dan, I love learning the little details!

Hi Jill,

I'm the chief architect at Adobe in charge of our application licensing.  Here is how our applications are supposed to work while offline:

• when you are connected to the internet, your application is able to reach the Adobe servers and it verifies your license.  When this happens, the application saves a "license credential" in your OS's secure storage (keychain on Mac, credential manager on Windows).  This license credential is timestamped with when it was retrieved.
• when you are not connected to the internet, your application looks for an existing license credential saved from a prior launch.  When it finds this credential, it checks to make sure that the current time on your computer is later than the timestamp in the credential.  If it is, your application knows it is licensed and it runs normally.  But if your computer time is earlier than the timestamp in the credential, the credential is discarded and the application will not run until it can connect to the internet again.

What I believe is happening in your situation is that your intermittent network connection is causing the time on your machine to "jiggle" back and forth.  This is actually a fairly common problem when using wifi (and sometimes wired) connections in remote areas, because most computers are set to verify their time against the network, and some brands of router will provide unstable times to the network when their own upstream connection to the internet is intermittent.  I know this may sound crazy, because you probably don't see any obvious changes in your computer's clock, but even a jiggle of 10 or so seconds can cause your saved license credential to be discarded.  You would not be alone in experiencing this problem; many of our photographer customers who work in areas with intermittent networking have reported it.

As Jeff explained above, the workaround for this problem is to tell your computer *not* to set its time from the network (following the instructions in this help document: https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/cannot-verify-subscription-offline-mode.html).  Then, once you connect and get your license credential saved locally, your computer clock will not drift, and you will be able to work offline.

Hope this helps! -d.

He didn't mean YOU have become unlicensed, but your software installation on this computer had somehow become temporarily unlicensed. 🙂 The logs will help them figure out what went wrong.

Nope - I am not unlicensed.  As soon as my internet came on I could open and work on both Photoshop and Lightroom

Hi Jill,

Sounds like you're misunderstanding me as well. If you're getting a warning that Adobe can't check your subscription, you have become unlicensed. Otherwise, the apps would launch normally and not give this warning. I'll send you a direct email. I will need to get some logs from you to send to our licensing folks.

Thank you Jeffrey but you have misunderstood my problem. 

I have not been unlicensed and my computer clock has not changed.  I have never logged out of Adobe

This morning my internet was down, which can happen frequently where I live.

I tried to open Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC but they wouldn't let me as I had no internet connection.  I had NOT signed out previously.   This meant that I was unable to do anything until my connection came back on.  And I had to sign in again even though I had not signed out when closing my computer last night.

This could be a big problem for me as I am planning to move to an even more remote part of the island.  Loss of internet connect is no problem, but loss of not being able to use Lightroom or Photoshop is.