In reply to John.H.

Hi John,
While Smart Software Licensing provides the most advantages in a connected world there are other options available that are in use today for the public and private sector including MSPs / GSPs / Large Internationals and Financial Institutions. You’ve discovered one option for partially connected air gapped networks using the satellite. We do recognize that there are other environments with no network connectivity. There is another option for isolated networks which provides full offline access - it’s called License Reservation. While it’s similar to PAK based licensing there are some advantages in using this option over PAK - primarily visibility into license ownership and the assignment into the Smart Account. It works by using copy/paste information between the product and cisco.com to manually check in (and out) licenses.

In whole, there are 5 options today:
1 - Direct cloud access - Where the product sends usage information directly over HTTPS. No additional components are needed.
2 - Access through an HTTP proxy - Cisco products send usage information over the internet via a proxy server. Any off the shelf proxy will work.
3/4 - Access through an on-premise license management satellite (ITAM) - Cisco products send usage information to a locally installed satellite. Periodically the satellite exchanges information with Cisco to keep the satellite in sync. This can be in either a connected mode or manually in disconnected networks.
5 - Full offline access (license reservation) - License can be checked out by copying information between cisco.com and pasted (or typed manually in fully disconnected environments). Functionally equivalent to current node locking but with the advantages of Smart Licensing / Smart Accounts.

Hopefully this answers your question. If not, let me know and I’ll be happy to discuss in more detail you.

Thanks for your comments!!

Tim Knapp