Automatic server discovery (for floating licenses only) allows a client application to find license servers on the network automatically. This feature eliminates the need for end users to enter server information and makes it easy for system administrators to move from one license server to another without notifying users.

Automatic server discovery sends UDP broadcasts on a fixed port: 6200. Available license servers respond to the broadcast with information about their location on the network, which the clients then use to proceed with traditional TCP communication.

Typically, the time to perform a server discovery can range from 500 ms to 1 second during a call to LMX_Checkout(). When a license server is discovered, the information is locally cached on the client machine, so automatic server discovery does not have to be performed at each application startup.

Automatic server discovery works only on local networks and will not work on WAN or VPN connections. Automatic server discovery is not guaranteed to work on all networks, particularly enterprise networks on which local firewalls or routers cut off UDP broadcast traffic.  

By default, automatic server discovery is disabled on the client side. Automatic server discovery can be enabled by the end user as described in Controlling license behavior.