Activation in a commercial environment

[Egor]

Hi,

I work for a large media company and we've just purchased a a copy of Octane Render with a view to using it to replace our current rendering application and grow the number of machines enabled for this task. Due to corporate policy there is a restrictive firewall at the network perimeter and all web access (HTTP/HTTPS) is controlled via a proxy. Most applications (Maya, 3DS Max, Windows, Visual Studio, etc) pickup the proxy settings and activate fine. Octane Render however does not appear to be detecting the proxy settings. Questions therefore:

• Are there any command line arguments or environment variables that need to be set to enable the application to route via the proxy?
• Does the application use common protocols (HTTP/HTTPS) for activation?
• Is there any documentation for the activation process (ie: ports/protocols used and target servers) or do I have to fire up WireShark and extract this information from the packet capture)?

The process here for getting a firewall exemption involves a 15 page request document, and a month long approval process, followed by a wait for a third party to update the firewall so I'd like to be certain we've got all the info correct before submitting it if we have to (although if we can't get the app to run via the proxy we might just cut our losses and ditch it).

Thanks..

Egor.

[gzavye]

A part of the answer ( I think ) :
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... ilit=PROXY

[radiance]

Sorry but if we add proxy support we break the anti piracy system...

As quoted:

Hi,

Unfortunately we cannot support proxy servers with octanelive, as this would break the security of the system and allow hackers to make a working but very limited cracked version of octane 2.3+

There is, on the other hand, no practical need for a proxy server. a proxy server is installed in a company to reduce load, eg if 20 people all load the same webpage, the first user loads it off the internet and the proxy keeps a copy for the other 19 users in it's cache so the actual internet connection from the company to it's hosting provider is under less load.

As octane does'nt load webpages this has no benefit.
Also, systems administrators should have no reason not to allow outbound connections to live1.refractivesoftware.com on port 443, as this does not present any security risk for the company in question.

Radiance

[Egor]

Hi Radiance,

It sounds to me like the it would be beneficial to your product to reconsider the anti-piracy system spec - many other commercial applications have anti-piracy systems in place but are proxy aware. Many organisations use proxy servers at the edge of the network, and the principal drivers are content filtering, access control, and logging for compliance with various laws rather than for bandwidth protection. I think you may find that most larger organisations have a very strict firewall policy but then delegate web access control via a proxy. This will prevent these organisations using Octane Render thus limiting your sales.

From your post do I correctly understand that the only requirement for activation is outbound access via the HTTPS protocol on port 443 to live1.refractivesoftware.com? If so is this address likely to remain stable or will it change over time?

As a side note the forum link given in gzavye's post is inaccessible with this message: You are not authorised to read this forum.

Thanks..

Egor.

[radiance]

hi,

It won't change, we are going to deploy load balancers in front on that URL.
All big products with http proxy support get cracked as the proxy decrypts, so you really need to just tunnel , eg open https to live1.refractivesoftware.com

It means it's for version 1, not server number 1

Yours,
Radiance

[Egor]

Hi,

Like most proxies ours does just tunnel HTTPS requests, but it is the only route out of the network for our users. Getting a firewall exemption will take 8 weeks and having to do that again every time the software moves to a new version is released is not an attractive option. Another thought for consideration in regard to future development is that routing though a proxy doesn't make it much easier for pirates, as it is fairly easy to do a transparent intercept of an HTTPS stream using a firewall. I understand that you need to protect your intellectual property (we have the same issue to deal with), it would just be nice if it could be done in such a way that your product could be readily used in a large corporate environment. We'll that's all from me on this topic. Thank you for your prompt responses.

Egor.

[radiance]

Hi,

We have a very very high security system, it's not just HTTPS , also, the octanelive backend won't answer to a proxy for security reasons...
Sorry but i don't see a reason why this would present a big issue. 8 weeks is doable, you can use a 3G or even a lower speed GSM as there is no need for much bandwidth at all. If you're connection drops, you can continue to work and render with octane, but not use the octanelive features offcourse.

Maybe start with 2.2b, and talk to your systems administration department...

Yours,
Radiance