Sockets left in TIME_WAIT state ???

[Fredrik Lundh]

Philip Payne <pnpayne at swissonline.ch> wrote:
> I'm brand new to sockets, in Python or otherwise, and I'm wondering
whether
> anyone else has experience of sockets not being cleaned up correctly (left
> in TIME_WAIT state, whatever that means).

does it matter?

> Is this normal socket behaviour, a bug in the networking software or a bug
> in the socket module that I should report???

if it didn't do this, you should definitely report it ;-)

simplified, the TCP protocol needs the extra time to make sure
that a connection is fully and properly shut down, and that there
are no packets in transit that refers to the old connection.

for the full story, read the TCP specifications.  (but trusting the
TCP designers on this one is probably easier...)

</F>