About Domain-Based Licenses

A standard license ties a product to a particular machine as defined by its host ID, but domain-based licenses tie products to a network domain. To provide a simple method for controlling access to the software, individual licenses can be ordered for domains or subdomains.

Domain-based licenses function without using a centralized license manager and without enforcing hard limits on the number of users. However, your software license may limit the number of users; these limits are defined in the licensing agreement.

The licensed software operates as long as the requesting user of the licensed software is on a valid network domain, for example:

Example--Valid User Requests

Example--Invalid User Requests

The license agreement signed by your organization includes information about the network domains where licensed software is installed. Licenses are issued only for the domains associated with your site as described in your agreement. Depending on how your network domains are set up, you can acquire a license for a single product (or product feature) that makes it available on all of the network domains at your site.

You also have the choice of receiving individual licenses for each domain and subdomain. This allows you reasonable control of user access to the software. For example, the license agreement may simply identify my_org.org as the domain on which licensed software may operate. However, you can acquire a license for a particular subdomain (for example, a subdomain of eng.my_org.org) and limit access to the subdomain as well as its subdomains.