Monitoring the status of a socket...

Question

I'm using ServerSocket and Socket in a simple client/server model. The situation is unique in that there is only ever one client - ever. That is, the server starts up and listens for the client to connect, once connected the client and server communicate through that socket forever and the server stops listening for connection requests - and, when connection is idle the it remains open.
On the server side, when a cleint connects I spawn two threads. One to service incoming data, and another to service the outgoing data. Each thread gets a reference to the socket connection by calling back to the parent (server) thread and requesting the socket reference. (e.g. server.getClientConnection();).
I want to be able to tell if the client has dropped the connection - for what ever reason. If I'm trying to write to the socket when there is no client, I get an exception that I can catch and handle, but I also want to know about the loss of the client when there is no message traffic. I'm exploring java.net.Socket.setKeepAlive() and getKeepAlive(), and I think these methods may be the answer that I'm looking for. However, I'm
not sure how to use them. Once I call setKeepAlive(true), then what? Do you know how to use these methods, or do you know how I can monitor the status of the socket connection otherwise?
If at all possible, I'm trying to avoid creating a "sub-protocol" of "are you there? / yes I'm here." messages. I'm hoping that JAVA can handle it for me.
Your input is greatly Appreciated.
-Craig

Answer 1

where is the method :
java.net.Socket.setKeepAlive()
?????????????????