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<FONT SIZE="2" POINTSIZE="11" DEFAULT="SIZE">My humble employer uses USB keys (dongles) to lock access to available feature sets in our high end TV graphics systems. They're a pain also. Further, they, and the software systems to support/manage them cost real money. <BR>
<BR>
Michael<BR>
<BR>
On Mon, 5 Jun 2006 11:09:56 -0400 (EDT), Jon Lewis wrote:<BR>
<BR>
>On 6/3/06, Kevin P. Fleming <<FONT COLOR=0000ff><U>kpfleming@digium.com<FONT COLOR=000000 DEFAULT="COLOR"></U>> wrote:<BR>
>> <BR>
>> ----- Sahil Gupta <<FONT COLOR=0000ff><U>sgupta@voicevalley.com.au<FONT COLOR=000000 DEFAULT="COLOR"></U>> wrote:<BR>
>>> We recently had around 60-80 licenses become useless because Digium<BR>
>>> refused to renew the keys on that. That was a bit of money kissed<BR>
>>> goodbye.<BR>
>><BR>
>> Unless you had been clearly abusing the key licensing system, our<BR>
>> support department will never refuse to enable a new registration on<BR>
>> your license key(s). There is no 'renew the keys', though, since they<BR>
>> don't expire.<BR>
><BR>
>I hope that's the actual official policy now. There seems to have been <BR>
>some internal conflict or communications failure at Digium a few months <BR>
>ago as to whether or how many times a g729 license key can be reset.<BR>
><BR>
>As a service provider (you could call us an Asterisk ASP), we regularly <BR>
>build & host systems for customers, retire/upgrade systems, swap out <BR>
>hardware, add interfaces, etc. which causes problems with the g729 <BR>
>licensing.<BR>
><BR>
>In one attempt a few months ago to get a license reset, I was initially <BR>
>told it was now policy that Digium would only reset the registration count <BR>
>once, and after that, you were SOL (or forced to play MAC address changing <BR>
>games or as someone else posted, try hacking around the license key code).<BR>
><BR>
>In that particular case, the customer's server had suffered a 2 disk RAID <BR>
>failure, and to get them back online, I moved them to a lower end system <BR>
>(what was readily available) while we waited for parts to get their dual <BR>
>xeon server back online. Both motherboards had built-in dual ethernets.<BR>
><BR>
>IMO, locking the licensing to a piece of system thats often built-in, has <BR>
>been very annoying. I think I'd be happier if it was locked to some sort <BR>
>of dongle (parallel, or more likely today, USB). At least that way, we <BR>
>could easily move the key anytime we needed to. It would be a bit of a <BR>
>pain any time a system needed to quickly be transfered to hardware already <BR>
>at another location.<BR>
><BR>
>The TRX idea sounds appealing, but I wonder how they'll handle servers <BR>
>that don't have internet access. Not all VOIP servers are on the <BR>
>internet.<BR>
><BR>
>I've actually wondered if we could legally use Intel's code in cases where <BR>
>we have licenses bought from Digium, but they're not re-registerable <BR>
>because Digium wouldn't reset the use count.<BR>
><BR>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
> Jon Lewis | I route<BR>
> Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are<BR>
> Atlantic Net |<BR>
>_________ <FONT COLOR=0000ff><U>http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp<FONT COLOR=000000 DEFAULT="COLOR"></U> for PGP public key_________<BR>
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