Add Network Floating License Capability To Your Software With CryptoLicensing

Introduction

What is a Floating License?
A floating license is a license which is not bound to a particular machine or a user. A floating license can be used by any number of different users and from any number of different machines (called 'seats') as long as the number of users or machines simultaneously active does not exceed the maximum 'seats' specified by the license.

The license validation and checking is done via a licensing server which is typically deployed over the internet. The licensed software communicates with the license server for validation. If the validation is successful - that is the number of users already using the software at that point of time does not exceed the maximum number of seats specified by the license, a license is granted for that user. The license is valid till the time your software is running. At software shutdown, the licensed software again communicates with the license server and frees up a slot so that another user may use the software.

What is a Network Floating License ?
A network floating license is the same as a floating license except that the license server is deployed on the customer's own internal network instead of on the Internet. Many corporate environments and policies do not allow machines on the corporate network to communicate with the Internet. Also, they may not want to depend on the reliability and availability of an outside license server to grant licensing to the software. In such cases, a network floating license will suit the customer's needs. A network floating license communicates with a license server which is deployed on the customer's own network or is otherwise under the control and administration of the customer.

Network Floating Licenses In CryptoLicensing
CryptoLicensing fully supports network floating licenses via its customer-deployed license service feature. Since the license service will be administered by the customer, this type of license service uses encrypted storage to store information about activations, etc.

There are some important things to note about the license service deployed and administered by the customer:

1. The customer deployed license service can be run as a Windows tray-based application or as a Windows Service. The app or service is run on a designated computer on the customer network. This application acts as the server for all requests for activation.

2. The customer deployed license service uses encrypted storage as opposed to a database to store information about activations. Since the storage is encrypted, the customer cannot fudge it to suit his needs. As the customer activates licenses, information about the activations is stored in this encrypted file. If the file is not present, the license service will not work. Thus the customer cannot reset activation data by simply deleting the storage.psf file.

3. The customer deployed license service can only be used to activate licenses - both normal and floating. Other functionality such as validating serials, On-Demand licenses, etc will not work since these functionalities can be used to generate valid licenses for your software.

Creating The Customer Deployed Network License Service
When deploying the license service to a customer site, you will require two pieces of information from the customer:

1. The address on which the license service app will listen. This is related to the network address of the computer. If the customer wishes to use the license service app on a machine with address 192.168.0.1 and wishes to use port 8081, then the address will be "http://192.168.0.1:8081/".

2. The machine code of the computer on which the license service app is running.

Now using these two settings, create a license service using the Create License Service Dialog in CryptoLicensing.

Deploying The Customer Deployed Network License Service
To deploy the license service to the customer, simply copy the license service folder created in the above step to that customer computer which will act as the designated server to listen and reply to requests for activation. As stated above, the service can be run as a Windows application or a Windows service.

Conclusion
A network floating license is an essential requirement for some types of software and for some customer scenarios. CryptoLicensing makes it extremely easy to add network floating licenses functionality to your software via its customer deployed license service.