Does anyone think it would be practical to map a port through a VPN to a dongle? I have two computers on a printer switch and every once in a while the program loses authorization. I would like to work from home but I just don't think the queries to the hardware key will be fast enough over a network.

Any thoughts?

Tell type of dongle

Sentinel Super Pro (parallel)

IMHO:

Even if it were possible, the ammount of patching an creative RCE involved would be unnecessarily complex.

A simpler, tested, solution would be to emulate or to modify the executble to work without the dongle, depending on the circumnstances.

Interesting idea... but the recommended solution with dongles is to undongle the app so it will work without one. Sentinel dongles are popular and have been reversed quite a bit, with some simple searching you should find much information.

Due to the recent developments in satellite TV chip protection, making it very hard to copy/emulate chips, there has been some very interesting projects started regarding sharing the original hardware over network (internet) instead, i.e. many people sharing the same original chip. A look at these might be helpful.

With a decent internet connection in both ends, speed should not be a problem for a parallel or USB1 dongle, don't worry about it.

To implement what [dELTA] said,
You would need to code a server in the unit that has the physical dongle attached. The server has to relay the traffic from the network into the parallel port back and fort.

You also need to code a client, installed in the machine(s) that run(s) the app, that can effectively hook into the parallel (Or USB) port and relay the read and write traffic, be it via API or interrupts, into an IP pipe, for communication with the server.

Everything's got to be transparent, so the app at the client side "thinks" that the dongle is indeed attached to the physical parallel port.

Virtualization at its prime, kernel level programming, driver code knowledge. . .

Any one up to the task??

For those interested in the field I mentioned above, a google for "card sharing" is a good start...

hi
www.intelidriver.com

with some search in google, you will find more comercial products.