UDP broadcasts

[jmccain]

Hello.

I am a network engineer. I've noticed that the computers of our users who have your madcap "Madcap Flare" product installed are broadcasting some odd traffic out on the network. This traffic consists of a series of UDP packets sent to IP broadcast 255.255.255.255, to several ports sequentially in turn (in the 8000 range), and that contain the following text:

<username> alive available

This appears to be some sort of service advertisement. We do not make use of any features in Madcap Flare which require application level network communications. How can we disable these broadcasts?

Thanks.

[RamonS]

Flare includes a feature that resembles an instant messenger application. For that and for licensing reasons Flare attempts to detect other Flare installations on the network. The licensing aspect comes from being allowed to install multiple instances of Flare with the same license key as long only one instance is used at a time (typically at work and at home or office PC and laptop).
I am quite sure those are the two reasons why you see the network traffic. I recommend contacting MadCap support to find out if there is a remedy or workaround. I wouldn't expect an easy fix because disabling this will also disable the licensing control mechanism.

[jmccain]

Random UDP IP broadcasts are exactly as appropriate a means of licensing restriction as would be a cable TV receiver that threw pebbles at all your neighbor's windows to ensure that they aren't stealing your cable.

[RamonS]

I'm not defending that practice, I was merely stating that the licensing and the IM feature are the two reasons I know of why Flare broadcasts on a network.

[LTinker68]

If you use the Feedback feature then you'll see some traffic, too, although I don't know what kind of traffic, and I don't know if it happens when you're authoring, too, or if it's just when your output is being accessed online.

[Madcap Guru]

I know that V6 of Flare has the ability to turn it off on install, but Flare's help file also tells you how.

How to disable instant messaging

1.On your Exchange server, open the Active Directory.
2.Select the user or group for whom you want to limit instant messaging and open the properties.
3.Select the Exchange Advanced tab.
4.Click Custom Attributes.
5.Select an attribute and click Edit.
6.In the attribute field, enter either of the following:
â– MadCap: Flare: im=off

This command disables instant messaging for Flare only. To disable instant messaging for other applications, change "Flare" to another application name.

â– MadCap: *: im=off

This command disables instant messaging in all MadCap products.

[jcoria]

Is there a way to disable this in version 4.0 and 5.0 without going into active directory/exchange? From the standpoint of V6.0 allows to disable at installation, is there a way to change an existing 4.0 and 5.0 installation?

Thank you.

JCoria

[Madcap Guru]

I Earlier versions of Flare 5 and earlier you need to go into the registry

[nessmonster]

My company does not use Exchange Server so the solution in the help did not work for us and I did not want to re-install my version 6.0 if possible so instead I found the DisableInstantMessaging registry key and changed the value to True and it fixed it!

The full path is HKEY-CURRENT-USER\Software\MadCap Software\Flare\IM\DisableInstantMessaging