Q. Can WAsP be installed on a server and be invoked remotely from a PC anywhere within a corporate network?

A: Yes, this is possible, when using WAsP 11, WEng 3, Fuga 2 or newer versions. It is still only possible for one person to activate the licence at a time. If you need more people to work with WAsP simultaneously, it will require an additional licence.

For previous versions of WAsP and WAsP Engineering:

A. Several customers have asked us about running WAsP on a remote desktop session (terminal server). This is often in order to use it in conjunction with WindPro, which can be accessed in this way. The idea would be to install WAsP on a central server, and then connect as a normal user via remote desktop. Again according to this idea, the licence dongle would be plugged in to the server, and the licence permission would be granted to one remote desktop session.

Unfortunately, WAsP will not work in that way. Remote desktop sessions connected to a Windows Server cannot see the dongle if it is inserted in the server USB port, even though other USB devices connected to the server are visible. This is a constraint (presumably by design) of the dongle system.

If you connect via remote desktop to a standard Windows XP/Vista/7 installation (not running a server operating system) then the dongle can be seen, but this may not be a practical alternative.

We do not have any plans to change our licencing system to make this possible in the near future. For now, you generally need to install the WAsP software on each machine where you want to use it, and run it locally, moving the dongle(s) around as necessary.

There are only a couple of other workarounds at present.

If you are a working in a small firm without tight network security, you may be able to open a remote desktop session using a console connection from the remote client. This is a poorly-documented hack, but it works. Only users with administrative privileges can log in that way, but it does give your session access to all the hardware connected to the machine as though you were using a local connection, so the dongle will work.

To do this, you need to open a command line box and type this:

mstsc /admin /v:FOOBAR

... or (with older versions of remote desktop)...

mstsc /console /v:FOOBAR

... where FOOBAR is the network name of your server machine. Only one user at a time can have this session open, but this one session will see the dongle.

Another workaround is to use a third-party virtualisation product. If you have a single server machine dedicated to serving only WAsP to clients via remote desktop sessions, then one possibility is to use a program called VmWare server (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/) to host your WAsP sessions. The software is actually free. You can install it on a server and then access it from remote clients. The dongle is visible for one of the client session under this configuration.