woods@hao.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) (06/18/87)
For us beginners with TCP and sockets, and after reading the recent discussion
here about LAST_ACK and FIN_WAIT_2 states, I would be very interested (and
I suspect I'm not the only one) in reading an explanation of what the various
socket states are and exactly what they mean. I'm the site admin for a machine
that is very new on the Internet, and due to the cost difference, I've had
to shift from phone line uucp links to NNTP/SMTP internet links as much as
I can, which now accounts for 80+% of our traffic, but I still don't understand
how this stuff really works, nor is there any good information from a system
administrator's point of view on it (I'm NOT a kernel hacker).
--Greg
--
UUCP: {hplabs, seismo, nbires, noao}!hao!woods
CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
INTERNET: woods@hao.ucar.edubzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (06/20/87)
>For us beginners with TCP and sockets, and after reading the recent discussion >here about LAST_ACK and FIN_WAIT_2 states, I would be very interested (and >I suspect I'm not the only one) in reading an explanation of what the various >socket states are and exactly what they mean. I'm the site admin for a machine >that is very new on the Internet, and due to the cost difference, I've had >to shift from phone line uucp links to NNTP/SMTP internet links as much as >I can, which now accounts for 80+% of our traffic, but I still don't understand >how this stuff really works, nor is there any good information from a system >administrator's point of view on it (I'm NOT a kernel hacker). > >--Greg Every symbol you see in netstat output (state) from Unix corresponds exactly to a box in the diagram on page 23 of RFC-793 (Transmission Control Protocol), same names etc, should be an AHA! when you look at it. Although the state diagram is a tad forbidding a few minutes study should reveal that it is all actually quite clear and provides good insight into such arcanum. -Barry Shein, Boston Universityt
Mills@BCO-MULTICS.ARPA (06/22/87)
The state diagram on page 23 of RFC793 is a good thing to look at. The version of the RFC in the new white DDN Protocol Handbooks (page 2-207) has an error in it. The arrow going from the SYN SENT box to the SYN RCVD box should be labeled rcv SYN/ snd ACK,SYN. I was disappointed that this correction was not in the white books since I discussed this with Jon Postel over a year ago. I don't know if the online version of RFC793 has been corrected or not.