C# – Read() blocking problem

ctcpclient

I'm developing a server application in C#. Clients can connect to the server and make various requests. Currently, when a client connects I spawn a new thread to handle the request(s). I'm using the TCPClient class to handle client connections. My server works as follows:

  1. Client connect to server with a request
  2. Server handles request
  3. Server waits to see if client has any more requests
  4. If client does not make another request within some timeout period, the server kills the connection

My problem is the following:

When I read from the NetworkStream object that I get from the TCPClient class, the NetworkStream Read() method does not block if there is no Data Available. When the server reaches step #3, I would like to set some timeout on the NetworkStream and if the client does not make any more requests within that duration the server should kill the connection when that timeout exception is thrown. When my server reaches step 3, the NetworkStream Read() method does not block, reguardless of what I set it's ReadTimeout property to be. Can anyone help me out, or suggest a better way to do what I'm trying to do.

Thanks

Best Answer

NetworkStream.Read and ReadByte should block until the timeout if there's no data to read. I think it's far more likely that the call is reading something, probably a bunch of zeroes. Check the data being sent by the client carefully.

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