Caleb Epstein wrote:
On 4/13/05, Don G <dongryphon@yahoo.com> wrote:
I also believe that non-blocking is an I/O only thing; it is not needed for connect or accept.
Not sure about the need for a non-blocking accept, but a non-blocking connect is a must-have.
While a non-blocking connect is a must-have I think a non-blocking accept is essential also. A server needs to be just as responsive to other things happening as a client. One might need to pause or stop the server completely, depending on the meaning given to each, and a server might be accepting connections on more than one endpoint. Without a non-blocking accept, both these general possibilities become impossible and one ends up with a single end-point server which must be killed to end the process, which I do not think scales well in today's world of network programming.