Hacking FMS pt. 2: FPAD?

Patrick Simon from Adobe was so kind to help us out today on our Edge/Origin setup and replied to my email on the Flashcomm mailinglist. I'm republishing it here again for anyone setting up and using Edge/Origin clusters.

"What are FPAD messages and why are they showing up in my network logs?"

It's okay that you're seeing these FPAD messages. Flash Player 8
broadcasts them by default when you call nc.connect(). Saying this, if
you have not configured FPAD on the server, they're not doing any harm.
However, a best practice is to switch them off with nc.fpadZone = -1
before you establish the connection with nc.connect();

==============================
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.fpadZone = -1;

// the default is 0, to switch FPAD broadcasts off use -1
// then connect by

nc.connect();

// and you shouldn't see the fpad traffic in
// ethereal (or similar network scanners) anymore.

/*
other fpad settings that are available:
nc.fpadWait = 250; // in milliseconds
nc.fpadOnly = false; // boolean
nc.fpadPort = 67; // Target port to broadcast
nc.fpadInfo.ip = edgeip; // only available if proxy is detected
nc.fpadInfo.port = edgeport; // only available if proxy is detected.

The default behaviour is that the player broadcasts the FPAD message to
port 67 to the network with fpadZone=0. Change these before you call
nc.connect()
fpadZone = -1 disables this broadcasting mechanism. So if this isn't
required, it must be set to '-1' before call connection.

fpadOnly=true will only detect the proxy on the network and won't
connect to the server.

The fpadInfo object is available only when player detects the proxy on
the network. You can trace it in you function for the onStatus event
whether or not the proxy is available.

The Player then reconstructs the URL based on the value fpadInfo.ip and
fpadInfo.port.

If, for example, there is a poorly configured FMS, this information may
tell you why the connection is not working.

fpadPort can be changed to some other port if the target FMS proxies are
listening on different port other than 67.

fpadWait is timeout for detection. If the player doesn't get a response
back within this timeout from any FMS server on the network, it will
connect to FMS directly with the information you provide with
nc.connect(). For example, even if there is a FMS server available but
it is too slow to respond, the player still has a chance to connect
directly to the FMS Origin server.

*/
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Comments

[alexsmith11]

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