codewarrior@daemon.org (Andrew Brown) writes:
> every now and then, some tcp connections get "stuck" on my machine,
> usually in the CLOSE_WAIT state.  the one i'm looking at now has been
> there for about an hour and a half.  i could ignore it (but i don't
> want to :), 

The close_wait/fin_wait cleanup is a good thing to add timeouts to.

The tcp specs assume the other end of the tcp connection is a well
behaved unix box.  If (for example) you get a lot of M$ boxes looking
at your web site, and they happen to disconnect all sessions
ungracefully you'll have quite a few connections stuck in FIN_WAIT.

For this reason its not unheard of for big server manufacturers to say
"stuff the RFC" and put a one or two hour timeout in all aspects of
the 3-way handshake.

You might want to ask in comp.protocols.tcp-ip .  This comes up there
every once in a while.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang Rupprecht    <wolfgang@wsrcc.com>     http://www.wsrcc.com/
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