List of questions

1. What is your license policy?
2. Does this license entitle me to any upgrades?
3. I need to re-distribute Genuine Channels sources with my solution as well. Is it possible?
4. I meet a problem. What should I do?
5. Framework 1.1 compatibility
6. How I can check whether my server is reachable?
7. Firewall and what ports should be opened?
8. What about HTTP authentication?
9. When I tried to send a message containing 1 megabyte buffer, it failed with a packet too large error...
10. Why sending 1/2/3 megabyte buffer takes so much time?
11. I need a XYZ feature!

License

What is your license policy?

Genuine Channels is distributed according to per-developer license policy. In accordance with it you should buy as many licenses as many developers will use Genuine Channels. Number of end users and installations is unlimited. You can distribute Genuine Channels binaries as a part of the commercial product only if your product is not competitor for Genuine Channels Product itself.


Does this license entitle me to any upgrades?
Yes, you will receive all future 2.x versions for free.


I need to re-distribute Genuine Channels sources with my solution as well. Is it possible?
You are disallowed to re-distribute Genuine Channels source-code as well as derived source-code by our license. If the third-party requires Genuine Channels source-code, they need to buy separate Genuine Channels licenses for each of their developers.
We do not apply any restrictions to re-distribution of Genuine Channels binaries (or derived binaries) when it is distributed as a part of your commercial product.

Support

I meet a problem. What should I do?

First, send me an e-mail with the description.
In reply I can ask you to attach binary log files created by Genuine Channels compiled in DEBUG mode.
Sometimes I need a sample reproducing the issue.

If you find a bug, of course, I will fix it for free as soon as possible.
If you meet any predicament, let me know. Usually I can advise a good solution or workaround.


Framework 1.1 compatibility
Genuine Channels support Framework 1.1 with two notices:
1. Genuine Channels ignores CustomErrors tag which is always treated as off.
The problem here is that you can easily set it to off using text .config file. But it’s very hard to make it programmatically.
Several of my customers had problems with it, so I finally decided to ignore this value since nobody wants having it on!
2. BinaryServerFormatter sink always have property typeFilterLevel=”Full” by default.

Channels

How I can check whether my server is reachable?

Just make any invocation to the remote host. If the host is unreachable, Genuine Channels will fire an exception with GenuineChannels.Exception.Send.DestinationIsUnreachable error identifier, so you easily can recognize it programmatically. Usually it takes about 5 seconds for Genuine Channels to check the connection.


Firewall and what ports should be opened?
If you use GTCP channel, just open firewall for incoming connections to the server’s port. Usually it is enough.
If you use GHTTP channel, then user should be able to download any web page from your site hosting .NET Remoting solution. You need to set up proxy settings on the client, if client uses proxy server.


What about HTTP authentication?
I highly do not recommend using HTTP channel authentication. Build up and use an appropriate Security Session instead. This is faster, efficiently and gives you much more possibilities.

Features

When I tried to send a message containing 1 megabyte buffer, it failed with a packet too large error...

You have met with the queue restriction. You need to increase MaxPacketSize and MaxTotalSize channel settings to the reasonable values.
Take a look though the Queuing section in Programming Guide for more details.


Why sending 1/2/3 megabyte buffer takes so much time?
Genuine Channels compress the content being sent by default. So it tries to compress 1/2/3 megabytes during the sending and, of course, it takes a lot of CPU, memory and time resources. You can switch off the compression either via forcing compressionless Security Session, or specifying Compression="false" channel's parameter.


I need a XYZ feature!
Send me the description in the e-mail. If it is an interesting feature that could be useful for all of my customers, of course, I will implement it.
If not, then we will try to find a reasonable approach or a workaround. I believe there is no anything impossible with Genuine Channels.