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<TITLE>LambdaMOO Programmer's Manual - Network Connections</TITLE>
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<H3><A NAME="SEC66" HREF="ProgrammersManual_toc.html#TOC66">Accepting and Initiating Network Connections</A></H3>
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When the server first accepts a new, incoming network connection, it is given
the low-level network address of computer on the other end. It immediately
attempts to convert this address into the human-readable host name that will be
entered in the server log and returned by the <CODE>connection_name()</CODE>
function. This conversion can, for the TCP/IP networking configurations,
involve a certain amount of communication with remote name servers, which can
take quite a long time and/or fail entirely. While the server is doing this
conversion, it is not doing anything else at all; in particular, it it not
responding to user commands or executing MOO tasks.
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By default, the server will wait no more than 5 seconds for such a name lookup
to succeed; after that, it behaves as if the conversion had failed, using
instead a printable representation of the low-level address. If the property
<CODE>name_lookup_timeout</CODE> exists on <CODE>$server_options</CODE> and has an integer
as its value, that integer is used instead as the timeout interval.
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When the <CODE>open_network_connection()</CODE> function is used, the server must
again do a conversion, this time from the host name given as an argument into
the low-level address necessary for actually opening the connection. This
conversion is subject to the same timeout as in the in-bound case; if the
conversion does not succeed before the timeout expires, the connection attempt
is aborted and <CODE>open_network_connection()</CODE> raises <CODE>E_QUOTA</CODE>.
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<P>
After a successful conversion, though, the server must still wait for the
actual connection to be accepted by the remote computer. As before, this can
take a long time during which the server is again doing nothing else. Also as
before, the server will by default wait no more than 5 seconds for the
connection attempt to succeed; if the timeout expires,
<CODE>open_network_connection()</CODE> again raises <CODE>E_QUOTA</CODE>. This default
timeout interval can also be overridden from within the database, by defining
the property <CODE>outbound_connect_timeout</CODE> on <CODE>$server_options</CODE> with an
integer as its value.
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