Solution
Firewalls are a dedicated appliance or software running on a computer or network that inspects information traffic passing through it, denying or permitting passage based on the configuration. There are two types of firewalls to look at specifically in regards to Simulation Moldflow products, and they are related to how a user will communicate with their license server.
Local Area Server Connection
In most cases, each individual machine will have its own firewall that comes installed on the machine. In most cases this is something very general, such as the Windows Firewall. In addition to this, unique corporate security protocol may dictate other forms of firewall exist on each machine.
Should you be accessing a server onsite to your location, or the server is your own workstation, these firewalls will need to be addressed directly. These firewalls can block specific applications that need to run, from running on your machine, as well as block communication between your machine and your server.
The list of ports and exceptions to be added to a firewall are below, and will need to be added to each machine in question. This includes your server machine and all of your client machines. This can be done fairly quickly and easily as a user, but if you need assistance speak to your IT department.
External Users and Global Server Connection
In these cases, there may also be a network firewall in existence outside the company network or local area of the server. This is to control security of data transferred from outside the network to machines on the network or within a certain location.
If this is the case, machines outside of the network or located elsewhere in the world may be not only blocked by the firewall on their own machine, but by an external firewall between the license server and their client.
The procedure for addressing this is very similar but may require direct assistance from your IT department as you probably don’t have access to network security programs. The list of ports and exceptions need to be added to ensure they aren’t blocked but that you also don’t compromise security by completely disabling your firewall.
Firewall Port and Application Exceptions
Ports: TCP and UDP ports 2080 and 27000-27009 (whichever is chosen for the license daemon, default is 27000)
Applications: adskflex.exe, lmgrd.exe, and lmutil.exe
Note:
You may notice that the specified ports and applications are slightly different than the 2011 release and prior releases. This is due to the changes applied to make Autodesk Simulation Moldflow programs fully FLEX functional. As such there is no more proxy component that needs unblocked as well as the port it communicated through. Also, starting with the Simulation Moldflow 2013 installation and continuing with the Simulation Moldflow 2014 releases, the license manager is a 64-bit application so the location of the below directory will not be in the x86 directory as it was in releases prior to 2013.
