ietf-nntp Section 4 - inactivity autologout timer duration

[Andrew Gierth]

>>>>> "Stan" == Stan O Barber <sob at verio.net> writes:

 >> Section 4 states:
 >> A NNTP server MAY have an inactivity autologout timer. Such a
 >> timer MUST be of at least three minutes duration.  The receipt
 >> of any command from the client during that interval SHOULD
 >> suffice to reset the autologout timer.  When the timer
 >> expires, the server should close the TCP connection without
 >> sending any response to the client.
 >> 
 >> Is there any particular reason that the timer duration MUST be at least
 >> three minutes?  It seems like an unnecessary statement which limits the
 >> configurability of servers.

 Stan> Yes, there was a desire to see that servers would not have
 Stan> autologout settings that would be so short that a slow client
 Stan> could not detect it.

There is an additional case to consider: current implementations
usually have a short inactivity timer for the first command of the
session, apparently as a defence against clients that connect but do
nothing. This is typically set to much less than three minutes (I
currently use 30 seconds); perhaps we should mention this.

-- 
Andrew.