Enter a licence#

A licence unlocks changes to the router. Reading does not need a valid key. A router whose key has lapsed, or that has not had one entered yet, signs you in and shows every page, every counter, every log and the audit log. It refuses to add to the pending changes or apply them, to restore an earlier revision, to install an app or to reconcile, and says what to do about it. Go to Admin → Licence and paste the key. It starts with WHL1..

What a router without a valid key still does#

Everything that reads. A lapsed subscription costs you the ability to change the router, not the ability to see it.

Signing in, reading this router, the audit log and /metrics never need a licence. A lapsed subscription still lets you take your configuration off the router.

Entering the key#

On Admin → Licence, paste the key from your purchase into Licence key and press Activate. The agent verifies the key, stores it, and asks the licence server about it at once, so the page shows the server's answer rather than only the key's own claims.

Two panels then describe what the router holds.

This licence — the licence ID, the plan, who it is licensed to, how many routers it allows, the features it carries, the expiry with the days left, when the grace period ends, and this router's own fingerprint.

Licence server — the server the agent uses, when it last refreshed, what the server answered, and the last refresh error, if there was one.

How verification works#

A key is WHL1.<key ID>.<payload>.<signature>: a signed statement of the plan, the features, the router limit, the expiry and the grace period. The agent verifies it offline, against an Ed25519 public key built into it, so a router with no route to the internet still knows what it holds and keeps working.

While the licence server can be reached, the agent refreshes once every 24 hours and receives a token whose expiry follows the subscription. A router that stays offline keeps working until the token's expiry plus the grace period the token itself carries — seven days on the licences the server issues today. During the grace period the page shows Grace period and says the date on which changes stop. Revocation reaches a router at its next refresh, within a day.

The page shows one of seven states: Valid, Grace period, Clock not verified, Expired, Revoked, Invalid or No licence. Licence says what each one means.

The refresh sends four fields — the key, a fingerprint of this installation, the host name and the agent version — to the licence server at https://license.rhymelikedi.me, and nothing else.

The router limit counts distinct installations that have activated the key. Nothing on the router frees a retired router's activation: that is a request to whoever issued the key.

Removing a key#

Removing the key stops every change to the router. It does not go to the pending changes and cannot be undone short of entering the key again, so the page asks you to type the licence ID first — as the System page asks for the host name before a restart or a shut-down. Where a broken licence has no readable ID, the word to type is remove.

What a licence does not do#

The plans and what each unlocks are on the product site. The prices are set, but nothing is sold yet: no terms of service or licence agreement exists, and what ships on the image is a stopgap that says in its own first paragraph that it has not been through legal review. Nothing can be bought until that changes.

See also#

• The first hour — the next step, once you can apply changes.
• First sign-in — getting to the page in the first place.
• Roles and the three planes — which plane the licence gates.
• API status codes — what a 402 means and where it comes from.
• What the router sends — the four fields in the daily refresh.
• The licence — the terms as they stand.
• If the install goes wrong — every change refused with 402.