I've been having some trouble with running the
SharePointSearchWebServiceApp troubleshooting application, and I've come
to some conclusions. For those who know better please give me some
criticism and feedback.

1) There are multiple places authentication needs set up for SSP to
work

a. Web Application Authentication provider

Whether your web application is set to anonymous or not makes a big
difference

b. Web Application Policy Settings Service Account

For Non-anonymous web applications this is the only place you have to
add service accounts to the web app security to make at least
search.asmx work.

c. Web Application Policy Settings Anonymous Acccess

You must have a policy for anonymous accounts if your web application
allows anonymous access

2) It looks like there has to be a sharepoint site collection
within the URL from which you are consuming search web services.

https://ssp/_vti_bin exists but there is something about needing the url
https://ssp/sitecollection/_vti_bin in order for security to work.

3) If your application is set up to be anonymous, and your ssp is
anonymous it looks like your site collection that contains the _vti_bin
path must also allow anonymous

4) There are a couple more confusing places where security settings
are allowed that remain a mystery to me.

a. SSP Properties has a field for allowed service accounts. This
is used when utilizing shared services from another farm. I don't know
where else it is used, or when it is necessary

b. It seems like under certain conditions I need the service
account set up with full control to the site collection I don't know
what these conditions are.

What are the benefits / reasons / dangers of giving your SSP anonymous
access?