Socket errors

[Sean Egan]

On Nov 27, 2007 12:48 PM, Billy Crook <billycrook at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you add a few more buttons for us to have to click to use things?
> You see my point right, why require extra clicks?

Because if you ever have the strong need to override Pidgin's totally
sane default auto-reconnect behavior that nobody's ever complained
about ever, it's probably because you want to reconnect *right now*,
not because you predict that tomorrow you'll want to reconnect exactly
12 seconds after disconnecting.

> Valid point, but any backoff will only mitigate this to a point.  In
> the end, servers have to be resistant to DDoS whether malicious or
> not.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they are. And in any case, the installed
base of benevolent clients is probably larger than any malicious
botnet would be. Recall that it was exactly this sort of
over-ambitions login logic that took Skype down for days; Google Talk
once had a similar problem. It's also an official XMPP recommendation
to have some random hysteresis on re-connecting. I don't think waiting
8 seconds is going to kill anyone, especially when there's a
"Reconnect" button for the super-anxious.

> When I read that I heard "If Status=Avaliable; try immediate reconnect"

That might not be a terrible idea; I still wouldn't make it immediate,
but maybe ensure it tries reconnecting within 20-30 seconds instead of
a minute.

-s.