[Asterisk-Users] G.729 licensing

[Kristian Kielhofner]

trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 22:19 -0500, Kristian Kielhofner wrote:
> 
>>	While I do appreciate the lesson in system calls, what does any of this 
>>have to do with the g729 codec?  :) Digium's G729 codec (and 
>>registration program) binds your license key to the MAC addresses of the 
>>ethernet adapters in the system.  Even then you can register to three 
>>different sets of MAC addresses before you have to contact Digium to 
>>have your key reset.  What do IP addresses have to do with anything?
>>
> 
> 
> if you  read what I said you would understand why I referenced IP
> addresses, which I assumed, aparently incorrectly that is the call they
> used (becuase it has been a standard call for licensing for at least 2
> decades).  As for the mac address ok that just makes it simplier to deal
> with since the app doesnt directly interface with the hardware (the
> kernel does) it is trivial to set the mac addr to whatevr you want
> (ifconfig does this with many drivers) which makes it an even more moot
> point than having to have code to 'play' as the original author wanted.

	When the g729 codec module loads, it checks to make sure that the 
ethernet MAC's in the system match those in the license file(s).  If 
they don't, it refuses to load.  If they do, good, you have g729.

	A typical "pirating" scheme might be buying one set of g729 licenses on 
a corporate LAN/ITSP/etc and trying to use them on multiple Asterisk 
servers.  For your "hack" to work, you would have to place an IP router 
(ISO layer three) in between each Asterisk server because they would all 
have the same MAC (ISO layer 2) address.  It would be so confusing and 
such a hassle it wouldn't be worth it.  I think that's what Digium was 
going for here...

	As pointed out in the scenario above, you could get away with having 
multiple systems with the same MAC address, just as long as they were 
connected at ISO layer three.

> Just gotta watch that you dont have two with  the same mac addr in some
> networks (some systems and network devices dont care enough others
> completly come unglued).

	Ethernet (specifically mentioned over and over here) does NOT handle 
duplicate MAC addresses very well.  At the very minimum, you would knock 
at least one of your "cloned" Asterisk machines off of the network, 
pretty much defeating the purpose of the scam in the first place.

>>	Wow.  Anyways...
>>
> 
> good response for someone that had to be explained yet again why I said
> what I said because of their inability to read in the first place.

	No comment...

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner