FXP tcp timeouts

bigbras36 · 01-19-2004, 04:25 PM

Does your control connection to your ftp site die when you perform an FXP transfer? Personally I find that it dies after about 10 minutes or so. If the transfer takes any longer than that, then flashfxp just hangs there waiting for the transfer complete message, which it never gets. Sound familiar to any of you?

I last posted a thread about this more than a year ago I think, and was told it was a problem with my router. So fair enough I didnt think any more about it, and just decided to buy a better one at some point.

I have however found out how to fix it. You need to adjust (or even create) a windows registry setting which controls one of the tcp Keep Alive settings.

This setting is something an application has control over when it creates the socket, which I am presuming Flashfxp developers never bothered doing. The setting defaults to 2 hours on Windows 2003 server (and other OS's?), so even if they set the flag on the socket handle, it may still not have worked correctly if they didnt set the socket option value to a reasonably small value.

Luckily, the registry setting lets you override the application level settings on its socket, so you can force all sockets to 'KeepAlive'. I set mine to 5 minutes, AND IT WORKS GREAT!

On windows 2003 the setting is at;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Services:
\Tcpip
\Parameters

and the value is called 'KeepAliveTime'. The setting might not actually be in the registry, so you might have to create it. I created mine, and set it to 300000 decimal which is in 5 minutes in milliseconds.

My problem occurs at around 10 minutes, so I figured 5 minutes was good. I have had no ill affects from setting this parameter, everything else works fine, and I seem to get the same bandwidth as before etc....

I just thought I would share this information with you guys and hope you find it useful. If, like me, this was really annoying, it needn't any more hopefully. I hope it works for you guys.

bigbras36

PS It should also work on non Windows 2003 machines, but the registry value might be in a different place. If youre particularly intersted in the relatively undocumented tcpip options of windows 2003 then go here for the info: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...an/tcpip03.asp

Edit: just wanted to say that you may need to reboot... I still had the problem until i rebooted.

MiG · 01-22-2004, 08:10 AM

Thx 4 the info, IÂ´ll give it a try, as fxp hangs here often on transfer completion ...

Anyway, I would be interested and very thankfull in hearing something from bigstar or any other "pro" concerning this fxp-transfer-completion-and-idle-forever-thingie, wich -to be honest- suckz bigtime ...

Also it seems the problem with fxp and small files (1-20.000 bytes) still persists, where flashfxp doesnÂ´t get the transfer end and waits for ages (forever) for completion (my guess is, it may be some mess with linux/win32 carriage-return/linefeed conversion on ASCII files ...)

Listing is very slow if RaidenFTP is involved btw...

Still, nothing better than FlashFXP

Meaning_less · 03-31-2004, 04:12 AM

hey man, thats exactly my problem ive had it for ages.. if the transfer is fast enough to finish before the 5 minutes it completes but if it doens't it never registers its finished..

only problem, im on windows XP and i can't find that keepalivetime.. ... in regedit.

u know were to go for windows xp man?? hope so

ive been trying to fix this for ages!!! D

thanks alot

MidKnight · 03-31-2004, 06:12 AM

if your system doesn't have the key, then you simply create it yourself

Meaning_less · 03-31-2004, 06:52 AM

im not that into computers.. i dont know really how,

but.. whats the exact name of the Registery? and what do i do for the time??

hope u can understand what im trying to say ??

PasPer2 · 05-01-2004, 04:35 AM

cheers bigbras, this was exactly the problem i was having and your help was invaluable.

i have made a reg file which ppl can double click on to make the entry if they are not confident with regedit. (only tested on XP)

i have attached it to this msg but if its against the rules and its removed, email me at pasper2@hotmail.com for the file

regards

PasPer2