Scoket connect fails with: Can't assign requested address

Question

Hi All,
I am running Java on Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Intel). I run the following code:
for (i=0; i<20000; i++) {
     java.net.Socket socket = new java.net.Socket();
     socket.connect(new java.net.InetSocketAddress("localhost", 80));
     socket.close();
After about 16380 local TCP connections, connect is failing with the error message "Can't assign requested address".
After waiting for a while, I can connect again.
It looks like Java is consuming all client-side TCP ports. When the error occurs, I also start to have problems connecting from my browser to any Web-page.
Am I having to wait for the garbage collector to free the ports, or is this an OS X problem?
Any help or ideas would be welcome.
Thanks,
Paul

Answer 1

It looks like Java is consuming all client-side TCP
ports. When the error occurs, I also start to have
problems connecting from my browser to any Web-page.I would take this as an indication, that the problem is on the server side and the web server might keep some resources after the client disconnects from the socket. You could verify that if you run your test program from another computer after the error occurs. If that program is again able to open connections, then this might indicate that the problem is in fact on the client side. However if also access from another machine is blocked, then I would guess it is a server side problem.
Am I having to wait for the garbage collector to free
the ports, or is this an OS X problem?Garbage collection is not an issue here.