I wrote my own server with epoll. When I sent TCP keep alive packages from client to server, epoll event will not get triggered. Question: I want my server to keep the connection open when server gets tcp keep alive packages.
I also tried to look at tcp info but there are no update for its attributes when server got keep alive packages.
I understand tcp keep alive packages is no data but header. I saw in my tcpdump, kernel sent back tcp keep alive ACK after received keep alive package. My goal is to keep connection open when keep alive arrives (kind like reset timer in my server, my server can close connection in no tcp real data)
I set up my client to make connection and send data (e.g "hello world") then send keep alive packages to server.
My server is epoll triggered. I already also tried to set my server to be non-blocking.
// epoll setting I tested
EPOLLIN | EPOLLOUT | EPOLLRDHUP | EPOLLET
(most questions I found on internet are related to client side, my question is more towards server or receiver side of tcp keep alive, how to keep it open)
No, this is not possible as far as I know.
You will have to implement a heartbeat in the application protocol, and then you can stop using TCP keepalive.
Related
I have a server written in C that closes the connection if the connection is sitting idle for a specific time. I have an issue (that rarely happens). Read is failing on the client side and it says Connection broken. I suspect the server is closing the connection and the client is sending some data at the same time.
Consider the following scenario (A is server, B is the client)
B initiates the connection and the connection between A and B is established.
B is sitting idle and the idle timeout is reached.
A initiates the close
Before B receives the FIN from A, it starts sending request to A
After B sends the request, it will read the response
Since A has already closed the connection, B is not able to read.
My questions are
Is this a possible situation ?
How to handle idle timeout for clients?
How to close the connection between A and B properly (avoid B sending request during the process). In short, how to close the connection atomically?
By my only little more than rudimentary network experience... and assuming that you are talking about a connection-oriented connection like TCP/IP in contrary to UDP/IP that is connection-less.
Yes, of course. You cannot avoid it.
There are multiple ways to do it, but all of them include: Send something from the client before the server's timeout elapses. If the client has no data to send, let it send something like a "life sign". This could be an empty data message, it all depends on your application protocol. Or make the timeout as long as necessary, including some margin. Some protocol timeout only after 3 times of allowed idle time.
You cannot close the connection atomically, because client and server are separated. Each packet on the network needs some time to be transmitted, and both can start sending at the very same moment, the server its closing message, and the client a new data message. There is nothing that you can do about this.
You need to make the client handle this situation properly. For example, it can accept such a broken connection and interpret it as closed. You should have already some reaction, if the server closes the connection while the client is idle.
How to close the connection between A and B properly (avoid B sending request during the process).
Server detects timeout
Server sends timeout detection message to the Client
Server waits for a reply (if timeout, assume Client dead)
if Client receives a timeout detection from the Server, it replies with ACK (or something like that)
if Server receives an ACK from the Client, then 'gracefully' closes the connection
from now on, neither the Server nor the Client should send/receive any messages (after sending the ACK, do not immediately close the connection from the client side, do linger for the agreed timeout - see setsockopt: SO_LINGER)
On top of that, like the other answers suggested, the Client should send a heartbeat if idle (to avoid timeout detections).
Well, i have to do a udp server in C on linux.
This is my issue, for example:
I have that each thread will manage a client. But recvfrom will accept packets from any source, so, how can do that each thread will receive the right client's packet and not others?
I hope I explained my issue well.
Thank you!
(I mean that my server will make a new thread for each client that want to be served. So with TCP i can use accept to have a "dedicated" socket for each thread-client connection, but with UDP i can't do the same.)
You can't have multiple threads reading from the same socket at the same time.
What you should do instead is either:
have a dedicated thread that receives all inbound packets, looks at the source IP/Port, and routes the data to the appropriate processing thread as needed.
give each processing thread its own socket that is bind()'ed to the same local IP/Port and connect()'ed to the particular source IP/Port it is interested in, then each thread can call recvfrom() independently and it will only return packets that match the source that the thread is expecting.
UDP is a message based connection-less protocol. Here, there is no definite connection / setup done between the client and server prior sending the data. It does not maintain any states for communication at either client or server. UDP uses datagram socket(SOCK_DGRAM) . This ensures each packet sent or received in any order but with preserved message boundaries.
TCP is a stream based connection oriented protocol. Here , a definite logical connection is setup between the client and server prior to the exchange of data. TCP states are maintained for communication. TCP uses stream socket(SOCK_STREAM). This provides a connection-oriented, sequenced flow of data with mechanisms for creating/releasing connection and for detecting errors.
In header of TCP and UDP , only port number will be present. It is the responsibility of the IP header to add the necessary destination IP address for routing. However the source ip address shall be obtained from the source host.
In both TCP server and UDP server, once the socket is created using the particular socket type, it is bound to the port using bind system call. This is done so that the client can address to this port of the server. The procedure of binding is not necessary in either the TCP client or UDP client, because it does not matter in whatever port the client communicates. Till this point, it is same for both TCP server and UDP server.
In the case of TCP server, the listen system call will be invoked to listen for connections on the particular socket. The listen indicates the limit on the number of connections that can be queued up and that the server process is ready to accept any new incoming connections on the socket.
The server calls the accept system call which is a blocking call that waits for incoming connections.
Once a new connection comes, a new socket descriptor is created and the connection gets established between the server and client. However, as server, it has to keep listening for new connections.
This is where the multiprocessing begins to get into picture. Since connections can be triggered by any client at any time by using connect system call, we need to have the accept call(blocking call)for the new connections. Further, to have these new connections processed in parallel, one option is to fork and create a child process which will in-turn take care of further processing of the new connections while the parent process waits for new connections on accept call. This is how individual client connections are identified and processed/handled in the server. In simple terms, in concurrent server architecture, there will be one listening socket and multiple connected socket end points at the server at any time.
Note : The connect system call from client triggers the TCP SYN from client for starting the 3 way handshake procedure. At this point of time, the client socket state is SYN_SENT and once the SYN reaches the server, the server socket state is SYN_RCVD. Then the server responds with SYN_ACK to client for which client will respond with ACK and this establishes the connection between client and server.
In the case of UDP server, there is no need for this initial connection establishment as it is a message based connection-less protocol using datagram socket(SOCK_DGRAM). So, UDP client will not need the connect call for connection establishment which turn strips off the need for listen and accept calls in the UDP server. So, the UDP client server architecture shall be a iterative architecture where every client request/response shall be sequentially processed as iterative server architecture are applicable for services like UDP(light-weight) that consume less processing time. Also note that since the time consumed for processing is less, iterative servers will be state less.
In the case of requirement of multiple threads listening on same socket, you can also go for select or epoll system call based software architecture, where every thread will be waiting on select call but in this scenario, it may not be of great help. An alternate design that can meet your requirement can be a combination of separate thread for receive,parse & dispatch that will direct multiple processing threads.
That's why you have a port number.
If your server is listening on say, port 8080, no other process will be allowed to bind a socket to that port.
All clients that want to connect to this server will need send their data to port 8080 on the server's IP.
The UDP datagram has a source IP and port - you know where it came from, so you can route it appropriately.
You may well need a dedicated thread to send to the port, maintain state and later match up replies with requests so that the originating thread can be signaled that it's own reply is available. This could be done by providing a callback in the request struct that the rx thread signals when the matching reply arrives. The callback could signal a synchro object that the originating thread is waiting on.
I wrote a simple tcp client and server
and ran them
I notice that when I use ctrl+c to end the program
the tcp connection be be closed
but the tcp connection state is like TIME_WAIT
then if I run the tcp client and server again
the tcp connection can't be established again
a RST packet is always sent by the tcp server
I have to wait for some time until the next tcp connection can be established
what is the reason for this and how to deal with this problem?
besides, I notice on one host, when a tcp connection is in state FIN_WAIT_2
even if it doesn't receive FIN, the tcp connection will become closed some time later
,why?
thanks
The solution for this problem is to set the SO_REUSEADDR socket option. This tells the stack to allow a bind on addresses that happen to be in the TIME_WAIT state.
The reason for the TIME_WAIT state seems to be to allow some time for the straggler packets to arrive. If the stack cannot make sure that the connection was shutdown gracefully, there maybe packets in transit or the sender may even be sending more data actively. The stack wants to avoid mixing these packets with the traffic of a newly bound connection.
Here is a good answer on the use of SO_REUSEADDR for TCP and UDP.
i've got this problem, in a test program, where i'm developing a client for MQTT, i'm subscribed on a topic, after that, i wait for "publish" message from the server to my client.
After a good recv (of a publish message) or after a recv timeout i send a mqtt PINGREQ to the server.
After a A PINGREQ i'm going to wait a PINGRESP, then i call a recv as in the case I were waiting for a PUBLISH message.
If the flow is this:
Client -> PINGREQ
Server -> PUBLISH
Server -> PINGRESP
Than the server publish message were lost. How to solve this? I'm using MQTT at QOS 0, it make sense solve this problem on this level of QOS or instead is smart to check this case at QOS1?
I think you've got things a bit confused. PINGREQ/PINGRESP are used when there isn't any other network traffic passing between the client and server, in order to let both the client and server know if the connection drops.
Your client should keep track of the when the last outgoing or incoming communication with the server was, and send a PINGREQ if it is going to exceed the keepalive timer it set with its CONNECT command. The server will disconnect the client at 1.5*keepalive if no communication is received. The client should assume the server has been disconnected if it does not receive a PINGRESP in response to its PINGREQ within keepalive of sending the PINGREQ.
The QoS level isn't that important, you have to ensure the keepalive timeout is maintained regardless.
It also occurs to me that it sounds like you're using blocking network calls - it might be best to move to non-blocking if you can to get more flexibility.
Can a process open/maintain 2 TCP connections in parallel? [for sending and receiving].
I tried the following scenario :
1) Client connects to server on one port, say 13101.
2) Once it sends, it will wait on another port 13102 to get the ACK.
3) Here Server can handle multiple connections [using select() on same port number].
Now, I am facing 2 problems:
1) Server on receiving data from Client1, it is processing data and for sending the ACK back [to client1], I am preparing a new TCP connection [with port 13102] and trying to send data. It fails with "Connection Refused".
2) In order to verify the above problem, I wrote another client2 program that just sends data to port 13102 [to client1, when it is in listening mode]. Still client2 is getting "Connection refused" error.
Yes, you can open lots of sockets! However, you shouldn't need separate sockets for sending and receiving, a TCP socket is bi-directional once it's opened.
As for your error, if you're using two machines, there could be a firewall preventing the server from connecting to your client. You might try using telnet to try to connect to the same port.
The error is probably because the client is not listening for an incoming connection. As stated above you can use a single socket for both send and receive.