Unable to contact licensing servers

Question:

When I attempt to reissue my license, and/or use the diagnostics.php script provided with Centova Cast, Centova Cast displays an error and indicates that it cannot connect to the licensing servers. Why is this, and how do I correct it?

Answer:

This indicates that Centova Cast is not able to contact license1.centova.com, license2.centova.com, or license3.centova.com for license validation. This will only affect you if you purchase a reissuable license -- non-reissuable licenses will not be affected.

Common causes of this problem include:

Your datacenter may run firewalls that prevent outbound connections. Many datacenters block outbound connections from web servers for security reasons. You should contact your datacenter and ask them to ensure that your server is permitted to make outbound connections to license1.centova.com, license2.centova.com, and license3.centova.com
Your DNS resolver configuration on your server is broken. You can test this by logging in to your server via SSH, and typing the following:
```
ping license1.centova.com
```
If you receive any kind of error message to the effect of "unknown host" or "unable to resolve hostname", then your DNS resolver configuration is definitely broken.

In any event, if you are unable to successfully ping license1.centova.com for any reason (regardless of the error message), then there is definitely a networking problem of some sort, and you will need to contact your systems administrator or datacenter to resolve the problem.
Safe mode may be enabled in PHP. This needs to be disabled.
Socket functions may be disabled in (or not compiled into) PHP. Check with your systems administrator to confirm this.
If all else fails, try using 'telnet' to connect to port 80 on license1.centova.com. Do this by logging in to your server via SSH, then typing:
```
telnet license1.centova.com 80
```
If you do not immediately see a message indicating a successful connection, then there is a networking problem of some sort and you will need to contact your datacenter or systems administrator to have this resolved.

If you have any doubt as to whether license1.centova.com might actually be down, please feel free to try the above connection tests using license2.centova.com or license3.centova.com instead.

In regard to the reliability of our licensing servers, all three are hosted on separate physical machines (one is hosted on a high-availability, multiply- redundant cluster and another is in a different datacenter in a separate geographic location) so the likelihood of all three going down simultaneously is near-zero.

Please note that if the tests above fail, then the connectivity problem is definitely on your end, and as such, we reget that there is unfortunately nothing at all that we can do on our end to resolve the problem for you. While our support representatives will be pleased to answer any questions you may have, the final resolution will need to come from your systems administrator or datacenter.

NOTE: This article is for Centova Cast v2 only; an alternate version exists for Centova Cast v3.