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Longest Open TCP Connection?
I thought it would be fun to run this submission fromivan256 who asks: "I was sitting at my desk noticing that i had be telneted between my linux boxes for 16 days, and it got me wondering... What would be the longest continuously open TCP connection? Is it still open?" I'd highly doubt this has actually been recorded, but I'm sure you guys have personal records you wouldn't mind bragging about.
Some hard core mudders over the years would have pushed limits of endurance. The only limit to the open time is mud reboots.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Do dumb terminals count? The x-term's server at my school is rebooted something like twice a year and since each of the "millions" of dambed x-terms use tcp for status and loging.....
At home I have kept a telnet session open for 2 weeks.... being used about 6 of 24 hours...
Well tis my 2 cents...
(even less with exchange)
I'd guess the longest open connection would be on a trading system that's been constantly up for years, for example at an investment bank.
I have seen IRC "idling" competitions hit months. Most of these people are either A> On the local machine. or B> On the local ethernet. But it's still over TCP/IP. These competitions could get crazy if there was such a thing. Think about it. You might have some sort a database over a ethernet on TCP/IP that has been open for two years or something like that.
At home I use my desktop mainly as a dumb terminal that I use to ssh to my firewall....Those connections don't get dropped....ever, unless I reboot...and that happens every few months..So my record has to be 3 1/2 months for local tcp connections....as for remote, I was once idle on IRC for 700 odd hours when I went on vacation once.
At my place of employ they have 3 file servers that are essential just mirrors of each other. They have constantly open TCP connections to tranfer the data to keep the info current. Last i checked the last time one of them had been rebooted was sometime in february of 98.So that would mean an open TCP connection of what 18 months or so. Of course these machines are all within spitting distance of each other, and its local ethernet, but its still an open connection.
BGP runs over TCP. There are probably some routers that have been up a while.
I personally recorded over 2000 hours, which is like 3 months. It was a telnet session between one host on my network to another running a modified telnetd to take the user directly into a BBS program. No crash, no reboots, nothing. until that one day I hit ctrl-alt-del on the wrong keyboard and felt like a dumbass.
Anyway, it was a fun record to set, still got people attempting to duplicate it.
I've had xterms from a server exported over my lan in daily use since Jan 19th of this year when the server was last rebooted for maitnence reasons.
And I thought my 62-hour record connection to an ISP I used to be with was good... heheh... staying connected to them was a pain in the rear.
Anyway, I tend to agree with the financial institution notion - they have to keep things open so us people can make our transactions 24/7. Although I have met a few people on IRC who would tend to push that record a bit... hehe.
In a particular MUCK I hang out in, a wizard has been connected for about 350 days, and counting!
That person is 151 days idle thow, and connected localy, but still, it's a damn long time.
Me
Who has had the longest open UDP connection? Snicker.
If you found an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) that hadn't broken for quite a while (hard to find perhaps, but they must exist), I don't know if they use TCP/IP, it's more likely some custom hypersecure protocol designed for low numbers of clients, but they stay open 24/7, and they've been around for a long time.
NT that I have to use at work is getting to me as well. A few days ago I accidentally hit ctrl-alt-del on my Linux box at home, and much to my surprise it was caught by icewm. Still not sure if this is entirely a good thing, but I guess for me it's too late to complain.
i use screen to telnet to a chat daemon on localhost. so long as the chat stays up, there's a port open. :)
-- My Sig is a P228.
I presently have a little work horse of a webserver that I use for some of my original clients. It's been up for 344 days solid now. It would have been up longer, but I had to move it from one room to another less then a year ago.
Is there any sort of record for the longest uptime of a *NIX box?
Could someone maybe open a loopback connection and keep it open for eternity? Just run Linux with *no* processes (sp?) open except the necessary ones, a server, and a client. With nothing to get in the way, could this connection last until Armageddon?
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
What's the oldest Linux kernel version and/or distro still in use, i.e., still doing actual work? We have an old Slakware box here (forget what version) that runs Linux 1.2.13, although I am sure there are much older versions in use. If it works, don't fix it!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Do UNIX-TCP-sockets count or just TCP/IP?
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
Am I right in thinking that in theory a TCP connection could remain open indefinitely but that all TCP connections are limited to a maximum amount of data that they can transfer? Something to do with the fact that a byte count of fixed length is contained in each packet.
This makes the original question rather academic; You can leave a connection open as long as you want but you cannot send any data over it in case you go over the limit...
Well, what I consider a personal record occured about 10 years back. Internet connections abroad were flaky at best, and totally unreliable usually.
It must have been in late 1989 or early 1990 when I held a connection open from Delft, the Netherlands to IscaBBS in Iowa City for 6:52, which was an amazing feat at the time. However, by the end of the session the Americans were up and going to work/school so the routers got loaded and the connection failed.
Ah, those times....
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
As a Webhosting company I've got two telnet sessions in NT open to the two Linux boxes we use for dns1 and dns2. I use them 2-3 times a day to check the status of Linux and add/delete zone information. I've had them connected since I booted the machines, 312 days agu. This also means I've had NT workstation running for 312 days without crashing it.
This would be the best contest. I once kept a connecting to my ISP for 73 1/2 hours. I was doing FTP downloads and IRC idling.