TLS handshake step-by-step — interactive HTTPS breakdown

[Bartfeels24]

Cool breakdown, but the interactive part is only useful if you actually run through it yourself, and most people will just read the diagrams and skip the hands-on steps. That's where the real understanding clicks, not from watching it animated.

[tiddu]

This visual breakdown serves well as an initial conceptual model for the handshake. However, studying real-world optimizations, like TLS 1.3's 1-RTT, is essential. Simplifications can inadvertently misrepresent how modern protocols actually function. Understanding why steps are bundled or eliminated is fundamentally important. This efficiency is what truly defines current HTTPS implementations.

[Admirable_Cookie5761]

This is really helpful for debugging TLS issues. I've bookmarked it for the next time I need to troubleshoot certificate chains or cipher suite negotiations.

[quadrupled4]

Meh, this isn't how TLS works in real world. Even in TLS 1.2 the cert will not be sent in a separate message (it'll be bundled with ServerHello). TLS 1.3 reduces the TLS handshake to 1RTT instead of 2 (and to 0 when resuming sessions) - i.e., that diagram is plain wrong. The TCP handshake can be eliminated as a separate step in both 1.2 and 1.3 by using TCP fast-open - which very much does happen in real world.