Quote:
we believe we have tracked this issue down. the client program was calling recv() after having read all available data from the socket, causing it to block, and of course the server sits and waits on recv() for each client connection, which also blocks, so it looks like it wasn't actually a problem with the server after all. however, I have since added a thread that starts in each child process, and each time a request comes in from a client connection, it stores the tim at which it occured in a global variable, which the thread looks at every 5 seconds. if the difference between NOW and the stored time is greater than a specific timeout, the thread exits, and the process terminates. the client developers have since fixed this problem, and we are putting out our update today, after which we will see if it is fixed.
So instead of using TCP's intrinsic back-off and timing systems you are hacking in your own? That makes no sense. The recv() WILL eventually return after a timeout.