||unity-dev|| Unity server sending policy files too fast

hi david,
what you are witnessing is a Flash Player architectural bug that rarely 
surfaces, but is a known bug nonetheless.

here's an excerpt from my discussion with the Flash Player engineer 
responsible for implementing the policy file feature:

"In public docs also, I [the engineer] suggested that, in separate
mode, whenever the server received a connection on the policy file port,
it could immediately send the policy file and close the connection.  I
won't bore you with the horrible low-level TCP / Berkeley socket API /
winsock details, but it turns out that this advice was wrong.  If the
server first sends and closes, then receives the <policy-file-request/>,
things can go bad and the player can end up never seeing the policy
file.  The results are intermittent because of race conditions.

The fix, which should be applied in Unity, is that, even in separate
mode, the server should always wait for <policy-file-request/> before
replying with a policy file."

I'll talk to Derek about implementing the suggested fix. shouldn't be a 
lot of work. we can send you a custom build offlist.

colin



Discussion list for Unity developers. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm having trouble when unity is on the same local network as the flash
> client. I used a packet sniffer to watch the traffic, and it looks like
> unity is sending the policy file BEFORE flash is sending the request.
> 
> Eg, the data happens in this order:
> 
>>From Server: <cross-domain-policy><allow-access-from domain="*"
>> to-ports="9100,9101,9102" /></cross-domain-policy>.
>> From Client: <policy-file-request/>.
>>
> 
> Then, I notice in my policyfiles.txt log (output by the debug flash player):
> 
>> Error: Failed to load policy file from xmlsocket://192.168.1.91:9102
>>
> 
> So it seems that flash will ignore the policy file if it is sent before the
> request? The problem seems intermittent, sometimes it works fine. So is it
> possible the policy server could be made to wait for the request before
> replying?
> 
> Thanks,
> David R
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