running out of low ports

[Greg Lindahl <lindahl@conservativecomputer.com>]

One thing I'd like in the kernel is a way to avoid needlessly running
out of low ports. If you want a low port, you have to loop calling
bind() to get the port before you can call connect(). As a result you
can never re-use a port that's in the TIME_WAIT state -- the kernel
doesn't know where you're headed, so it can't ensure that you won't
get a port that was talking to that same remote IP.

Because of this limit you can only make outgoing low-port connections
at a rate of 1024/TIME_WAIT_TIME or less. Which is pretty slow.

-- g


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