Re: TCP time_wait and port exhaustion for servers

Ray,

With a 60 second timeout on TIME_WAIT, local port identifiers are tied up from being used for new outgoing connections (in this case a proxy server). The default local port range on Linux can easily be adjusted; but even when bumped up to a range of 32K ports, the 60 second timeout means you can only sustain about 500 new connections per second before you run out of ports.

Is that 500 new connections per second per {protocol, remote address, remote port} tuple, that's too few for your proxy? (OK, this tuple is more or less equivalent with only {remote address} if we talk about a web proxy.) Just curious. Regards, András