Mark Crispin writes:
Any TCP implementation, in which the cost of a static connection is non-trivial, is broken.Speaking personally: I agree wholeheartedly. And if I had any realistic plan for getting rid of all the NAT boxes in the world, I'd do it.
However, the evil boxes are here and they require that TCP connections send a keepalive packet every minute or so to guard against silent disruption. The cost of that increases approximately linearly with the number of parallel IMAP connections.
Of course there are greater problems. Most clients have problems that dwarf this. But in comparison to STATUS the cost may be comparable, depending on environment. GPRS springs to mind.
--Arnt
