Releasing internet ports...

[jon at msunix.UUCP]

Hello,

I just have a simple question, it doesn't really affect my program,
but I'm curious as to the reasons behind its behavior.

I am writing this multiuser blackjack game in my spare time using
sockets in the Internet address family (Sun-2/120, Sun 2.0 UNIX).
The interprocess communication seems to work fine, all I have to do
is figure out how to arrange six people in a semicircle on a 24x80
screen and figure out what to do when a person is dealt four eights
and splits pairs three times, but that's another story...

I'm in this mode where I'm adding little features, relinking, and then
firing up the server (dealer) and getting a client (player) to connect.
I fool around with the client for a while, then I exit.  I then send
the server a signal to kill it.  The server catches the signal and closes
its open file descriptors, then exits.  If I try to fire up the server
soon after that, it dies on the bind, with "address already in use".
If I wait a couple minutes before retrying, it runs fine.  My question
is, is there like a timeout in the spec for tcp/ip that says a port
is released x amount of time after the last socket bound to it dies, or
something like that?  Should I be making another system call before I
exit or something?  Perhaps someone could point me to a section in
a tcp/ip spec.  Oh, yes, I don't really have much of a formal CS
education, so explanations in simple terms would be appreciated.


"If we did it like everyone else,		Jonathan Hue
what would differentiate us from		Via Video Inc.
every other company in Silicon Valley?"	  sun!sunncal\
						      >!leadsv!msunix!jon
"A profit?"				amdcad!cae780/