TCP RST question

[Julian Elischer]

Hartmut.Brandt at dlr.de wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm looking at our TCP stack and found a change that was introduced with
> the syncache. The original BSD code did send an RST segment when the
> connection timed out in SYN-RECEIVED. The TCP would retransmit the
> SYN+ACK several times and then give up and RST the peer.
> 
> With syncache, however, our TCP doesn't send the RST anymore. It just
> silently discards local state.
> 
> So the question is whether TCP is supposed to RST or not. Looking at
> RFC793 I found nothing useful. It talks about sending RSTs as response
> to incoming segments and it looks like TCP is never supposed to give up
> retransmitting. The state diagram has no line from SYN-RECEIVED to
> CLOSED. Stevens, on the other hand, has this line and it is labeled
> 'send: RST'.
> 
> So the questions are:
> 
>  - is TCP supposed to send an RST when it times out in SYN-RECEIVED?
>  - why was this changed (I suppose it is just one of the regressions
> introduced with the syn-cache).

maybe something to do with avoiding DOS or something?

> harti
> 
> NB: does anybody know a good mailing list where this kind of questions
> can be discussed?
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