Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Warning: Keep-Alive considered harmful
Message-ID: <1990Nov19.162245.10683@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Nov16.164448.9918@bwdls61.bnr.ca> <9011170344.AA20268@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU> <1990Nov19.063111.21768@Think.COM>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 90 16:22:45 GMT

In article <1990Nov19.063111.21768@Think.COM> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>Unfortunately, keep-alives are sometimes needed to work around deficiencies
>in application protocols.  For instance, there's no way for a server telnet
>to detect when the client host has crashed ...

I think this is a confusion of mechanism with policy.  A server telnet needs
a way to tell the TCP layer "ping the other end".  That is not the same as
having a wired-in policy that the TCP layer will ping the other end regularly
and break the connection if there is no response.
-- 
"I don't *want* to be normal!"         | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Not to worry."                        |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry