Arrowpoint cookies and state changes

Question

We have an 11050 6.10 build 4 (replacing it soon with a 11501) that is setting a cookie so we can stick a client to a server. The application is also setting a JSESSION cookie. The service is doing a HEAD to a specific page to verify the service is up. The service can change state often (say 1000 times in 2 hours) but the service is not always marked as down. It may only be marked as down 5 to 10 times in those 2 hours. The users are experiencing slow response and are getting kicked out of the application and going back to a login screen. My questions are:
1. State Change Counters. If I go from alive to dying to alive is that 1 or 2 state changes?
2. If a service is dying and a client connects to the service with the cookie already set will the CSS send them to the dying server or will it send them to the alive server? If it sends them to the alive server does it reset the cookie?
3. If the service is down does the CSS send a RST to the client or does it just over write the cookie and send it to the alive server?
4. Service timeouts. Is it true that the timeout for a service is the frequency -1? So if I have a frequency of 5 seconds if the CSS doesn't get a response within 4 seconds the service would go to the dying state?
Thanks

Answer 1

Thanks for the response. According to the Cisco documentation below when a service is down the client will be directed to the alive server. If clients aren't automatically sent to the alive server how would they ever get off the down service?
The service isn't strange it's the app that's strange ;-) Basically they're getting slow response and the clients are getting kicked out of the app. As usual they want to blame every thing else but the app.
The increase that I thought I was seeing in the state counters might not be accurate. When I did the show service it said the counters had been cleared this morning and they were already up to 1300. However, no one logged into the CSS except our Ciscoworks server. I'm not sure why it said they were cleared this morning unless CW2K is doing it. I cleared the counters and they're back to zero so I'll monitor it.
---Cisco Doc-------
When a client comes in with a valid cookie request but the sticky server is not available, the CSS uses the sticky-serverdown-failover configuration to handle the request.
By default, the sticky-serverdown-failover is configured as balance. The sticky-serverdown-failover balance method will treat the client's request as an initial request without the ArrowPoint cookie. It uses the load-balancing algorithm to choose a server, and then redirects the request with a generated ArrowPoint cookie.
The other option is a failover type of redirect. In this case, the CSS redirects the request to the specified URL.
The command sticky-no-cookie-found-action should not be configured in an ArrowPoint cookie content rule. Not only will this command not work, it produces many irregularities in the CSS.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/ps789/products_tech_note09186a00801c8c2f.shtml