How Licenses Are Calculated

A user license for the appliance does not represent a person, but rather a user authentication. If a user logs in to WorkPlace on a desktop computer, for example, and is also logged in on a mobile device, two licenses are consumed as soon as the user accesses a resource that’s protected by the appliance.

A license is released when a connection has been inactive for 15 minutes. How this inactivity is measured depends on the user’s access method:

• With translated, custom port mapped, or custom FQDN mapped Web access, the license is released after 15 minutes during which no resources are accessed.

• When Connect Tunnel is running, the connection to the appliance is kept open, which means that the license is in use as long as the tunnel is up. Once the tunnel is disconnected, the license is released after 15 minutes.

There are a few ways to restrict or end sessions:

• Restrict the number of licenses that a person can have on a per-community basis. When the limit is reached, no further appliance sessions (and no access to resources) are allowed. The user can start a new session only by terminating existing sessions. For a description of the Maximum active sessions setting, see Assigning Members to a Community.
• Have tunnel client sessions terminate-on a per-community basis-when the time period set for Credential lifetime (on the Configure General Appliance Options page) is reached, where the Limit session length to credential lifetime setting is enabled by default. See Ending User Sessions.
• Terminate a user session manually. See Viewing User Sessions for information on how to end user sessions in AMC. Also see Open vs Licensed Sessions for more on the distinction between different types of sessions.

Users who reach the limit of their appliance licenses and then attempt to authenticate with just a client certificate are not prompted to terminate all existing sessions. These users must terminate an existing session in order to free up a license and start a new one. The best method for terminating a session is for the user to log out, otherwise he or she must wait 15 minutes for the session to time out and a license to be released.