TCP half-open: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:03, 19 February 2009

Revision as of 14:19, 12 May 2009

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A TCP connection is referred to as ''half-open'' when the station at one end of that TCP connection has crashed, or has otherwise removed the socket without formally notifying the other end of the TCP connection.

Due to the stateless nature of the Transmission Control Protocol, it is possible that if the application controlling the still-existing end of the connection is not expecting a response, then that socket may persist indefinitely in the state known as TCP half-open.

Note: A common misconception throughout the Internet is that the term TCP half-open applies to a partially-completed TCP handshake state. A better term for this unsynchronized kind of socket state is an [[Embryonic connection|embryonic]] state.