Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Socat is terrible.

When used to establish a persistent connection to a remote listening (TCP) port, it has NO WAY to detect that the remote end has dropped the connect, and automatically reconnect. It just does not work.

Yes, I know all about all the keep-alive and retry options in the manual. Try it yourself.

It's one of those horrible tools that you can get up and running quickly, but can never make work reliably.



I don't think you understand how TCP works. A TCP connection can stay alive through an unplugged Ethernet cable if it hasn't sent any packets.


I've worked as a senior network admin for some very large organizations. Safe to say I understand TCP.


i doubt that socat did not handle TCP RST. is not it the network environtment which eats TCP RST in some cases (like AWS NLB).


That's why I said try it yourself... It's no good for serious use. Here's the first search result:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9341254/reconnect-socat-...




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: