bouyer@antioche.eu.org (Manuel Bouyer) writes:

>So yes, when an address change or an interface goes away we can't
>terminate existing connections, because it may eventually come back in
>some time.

The same could be said for the writing case, but as you said:
"[the application] expects the stack to deliver it to the remote end
within a specified amount of time, or get an error once this amount
of time has expired". There the TCP stack does terminate an existing
connection even when [the interface] might eventually come back in
some time.

The fact that you currently can get away with changing an interface
(for the simple case that the connections are all idle) is completely
arbitrary. It's just 'luck' that the TCP protocol can't tell a reader
that the peer is unreachable.


-- 
-- 
                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv@serpens.de
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."