So... I was writing an MXML/AS3 application that uses a Socket class instance to consume large amounts of data from a Java socket server program. The server is supposed to write very rapidly 1MB data chucks to a connected AS3 client. Now the funny part is that when the packet size is less that 64K, the server would write these packets very quickly, but when it was writing 1MB chucks, it would "stall" between writes while the client was reading the data in 64KB chuncks. So, I start pulling my old TCP tuning trick back from my 'C' days to tune the socket server. But no difference. I can only tune the server side as the client AS3 socket class does not offer any tuning properties and I'm assuming that the folks at Adobe would implement sockets correctly. It is this last statement that kept nagging me. "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" (Sherlock Holmes). So I wrote a simple Java socket client to test my server and guess what...no stall, A-Ha ! So there _is_ an issue with AS3 Sockets...but still...could not believe it, I mean...my MacBook Pro is used for development, God knows how many libraries I've installed and I have two VPN clients and again, God only knows what they setup in the kernel to make the tunnel. So, I took my Java server jar and my AS3 AIR application and installed them on a "clean" MacBook. Started the server and then the AIR application, and guess what....same result. The server stalls between writes as the AS3 Socket client is reading in 64K chucks the data. Now this is messed up. Dusted my old Dell with XP, installed the latest updates (that took forever) and then dropped the java server jar and AIR application. Started the server and then the AIR application, and guess what ? NO STALL. No way....my trusty Flash Player implementation on MacOS has issues. Just to make sure, started the server on XP and AIR on MacOS; stall. Started the server on MacOS and AIR on XP; No Stall.
I'm writing this to share my experience, the binaries and the source code hoping that somebody out there tells me that I've done wrong or if there is indeed an issue.
Please test it yourself. You need to have Java and AIR installed. The AIR package is here and the server jar is here. The java source code is here and the FlashBuilder project is here.
From a command line, start the java server as follows:
$ java -jar SocketServer.jar
As to the client, just double click on the installed application. I'm printing to the console the number on packets that have been sent. On my Mac, I see a print statement every one second. On my XP, all is done in one second.
Thanks Y'all - in the meantime will do my development off my XP. Happy New Year.
