Lost connection on Socket

[Leo_14]

How can client app figure out that connection to server has been lost without pinging the server? (traffic is pretty high)
Is there any kind of socket event which I can use to reset ErrorStatus on this connection?
Greatly appreciate any help

[Chris Vail]

Pinging is not necessarily a good way to determine that a host is up. Several times I've seen systems that would respond to a ping, but the system was totally, absolutely hung. Ping is a low-level protocol that doesn't test whether or not a system is really functional or not.

My solution was to use NFS and NTP. Merely have each host in question touch a file on an NFS mounted directory once per minute. As long as both hosts have the same time (as coordinated by NTP)then the timestamp on the touched file should match the current time on the host. If the timestamps don't match, then there is a problem.

NFS is a high-level protocol that fails when a system is crashed or hung. So this is a good way to determine the status of the host.


Good Luck
Chris