On 2007-3-26, at 14:09, ext Gorry Fairhurst wrote:
Thoughts and comments are welcome!
I'd be good to keep the discussion in RFC1122, Section 4.2.3.6 on TCP keep-alives in mind:
A "keep-alive" mechanism periodically probes the other
end of a connection when the connection is otherwise
idle, even when there is no data to be sent. The TCP
specification does not include a keep-alive mechanism
because it could: (1) cause perfectly good connections
to break during transient Internet failures; (2)
consume unnecessary bandwidth ("if no one is using the
connection, who cares if it is still good?"); and (3)
cost money for an Internet path that charges for
packets.
These days, I'd add: (4) keep-alives can drain battery power, because
they may prevent certain radio links from efficiently utilizing their
low-power modes.
A TCP keep-alive mechanism should only be invoked in server applications that might otherwise hang indefinitely and consume resources unnecessarily if a client crashes or aborts a connection during a network failure.Note that I'm not vehemently opposed to the idea of adding keep- alives to DCCP, but the pros and cons must be weighted carefully.
Lars
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