Notes on the use of FluidSIM with or without internet connection

Does FluidSIM need access to the Internet?

FluidSIM, like many other software, is provided with a software protection, which is supposed to prevent an unauthorized distribution of the program. If you want to use FluidSIM on a PC, a license is required for the software protection to release the program. Corresponding licenses for the various technologies pneumatics, hydraulics and electrical engineering can be purchased from Festo Didactic SE.

After purchasing FluidSIM, you will receive your licenses in purely digital form as a so-called license ticket. This is a 25-digit code under which your licenses are stored at Festo. Whether FluidSIM requires access to the Internet depends on how you want to make your purchased licenses available to your users.

Basically, FluidSIM can be used completely without an Internet connection.

You have the possibility to use your licenses from the license ticket quite flexibly either for offline licensing or online licensing. With offline licensing, an Internet connection is only required once, during or after installation. With the online license, on the other hand, an internet connection is required as long as FluidSIM is running.

You do not have to decide in advance which type of licensing you want to use. You can always choose how many licenses you want to use offline. The remaining licenses are automatically available as online licenses.

The two licensing types are described in more detail below. In addition, the basic concepts are also clearly described in the tutorial video Licensing management basics.

Offline licenses

With offline licensing, a freely selectable number of licenses from your license ticket is bound to a hardware. This can be a specific single PC, a PC located in the local area network (LAN) or even a special USB stick (“dongle”).

Offline licensing is implemented using CodeMeter technology from Wibu (www.wibu.com). For this, the CodeMeter runtime must be installed on the PC on which FluidSIM is running and on any license server that may be present. By default, CodeMeter communicates in the LAN via the network port 22350 with the protocols TCP and UDP. With the so-called “WebAdmin” the license information can be displayed in the browser. For this purpose, port 22352 is used for HTTP requests and port 22353 for HTTPS requests.

During the installation, or at any time later, you can import licenses into a PC or USB dongle using the supplied “License Activation Wizard”. These licenses are bound to this hardware from then on. These licenses can still be used from different PCs via the LAN or by reconnecting the USB dongle. A maximum of as many FluidSIM instances can be started at the same time as local licenses have been imported.

For offline licensing, the corresponding licenses are debited from the license ticket once. The Festo servers keep track of how many licenses have been transferred to which PC or dongle. You have three options for importing the licenses:

  1. Direct internet connection
    This conveniently requires an Internet connection from the PC into which the licenses are to be imported.

  2. Indirect internet connection
    It is not necessary that the PC on which FluidSIM is to be used is directly connected to the Internet. It is sufficient if any PC can contact the license server. In this case, the licensing of the actual PC is done by exchanging files.

  3. Manual licensing
    Please contact the support of Festo. Several manual steps are then necessary.

However, the binding to a specific hardware also requires that the licenses are transferred back from the relevant PCs to the Festo servers when the hardware is replaced, e.g. when leased devices are exchanged, so that they are then available again for use on new devices.

Online licenses

Online licensing is a flexible way to use FluidSIM from any PC. The licenses are managed dynamically via servers on the Internet. Therefore, a permanent internet connection is required on the PC where FluidSIM is used.

No licenses have to be installed; all licenses that are not locally bound to a hardware are automatically available for online use. For this purpose, the user logs in with a group name and a password when starting FluidSIM. Group name and password are defined by the administrator of the licenses (e.g. an administrator of your company or a teacher in your school). For this purpose, there is the included “License Manager”, which can be used to set up and manage user groups.

As long as a FluidSIM instance is running with an online license, a license is occupied. This license is automatically released as soon as FluidSIM is terminated and is available to other users again.

Which program modules require internet access?

In a standard installation, the executable FluidSIM modules are located in the folder “C:\Programs\Didactic\FluidSIM6\bin”. This folder contains the program “FluidSIM6.exe”, the activation wizard for the offline licenses “CodemeterActivationWizard.exe” and the license manager “LicenseManager.exe” for managing the online licenses. Furthermore, the program for communication with the license server “RLAClient.exe” is required by the online licensing.

Which IP addresses and ports are used?

If you are running a firewall, the executables mentioned above need access to the domains “lc.codemeter.com” for the one-time activation of an offline license and “shopsys.de” for the administration of the online licenses. These programs contact the servers via TCP port 80 (http) and 443 (https). Only outgoing connections are established.

The specified domains do not have fixed IP addresses. For the online license, additional servers with dynamic addresses are used depending on the load. When using the online license, additional addresses can therefore be contacted by the program. However, the minimum requirement for the online license is only access to “shopsys.de”.

Summary

Offline license Online license
Manually Indirect Direct
Program - Internet browser CodemeterActivationWizard.exe LicenseManager.exe
RLAClient.exe
Internet required no Once on an arbitrary PC Once on PC to be activated Permanent
Domains - lc.codemeter.com shopsys.de, lc.codemeter.com shopsys.de
TCP Ports
(outgoing)		 - 80, 443 80, 443 80, 443

Where are the servers located?

Our server locations are all in Germany. No data is transferred to other countries. All processing and storage is done exclusively on servers in Germany.

What personal data is collected?

Basically, the use of FluidSIM is completely anonymous. If you use the online licensing, you have to create a license account. You can use any name for this purpose.

The names of the students who log in to FluidSIM can (reasonably) be seen by the teacher. To what extent here the teacher requires that the students enter their real names depends on the circumstances. In principle, the students can also use a pseudonym as name.

Moreover, IP addresses are logged on the server side. This, too, can sometimes be interpreted as personal data. Finally, Festo can infer the customer who purchased FluidSIM via the license ticket.

To whom is user data passed on?

Only the software developer Art Systems Software GmbH and the sales partner Festo Didactic SE have access to all data that is generated during the installation, licensing or use of FluidSIM. No data will be passed on to third parties.