On Sat, Jul 07, 2007 at 03:09:08PM -0500, John R. Dennison wrote:
> 	There is apparently an issue with 1.2 and I believe I have
> 	also seen it occur with 1.3, where if there is no client
> 	activity within 30 seconds it ghostbusts.  This is not the
> 	impression we wish new players to see when they first play
> 	netrek, it gives the impression that the game is broken.
> 
> 	Has this been address?  Does your client respond to server
> 	pings?

It isn't sufficient to merely respond to server pings.  The client must
also ask for the server to send the pings.  This is a feature of the
current server source code.

Here's a specification written from the source:

The use of the ping packets within the Netrek protocol is mandatory, as
follows:

1.  the client must send CP_PING_RESPONSE with a pingme value set to 1,
after it receives the SP_LOGIN with accept set to 1.

2.  on receipt of CP_PING_RESPONSE with pingme set to 1, the server will
send SP_PING packets to the client based on etc/sysdef configuration, 

3.  when the client receives an SP_PING packet, it must send a
corresponding CP_PING_RESPONSE packet in reply.

Failure to do either 1 or 3 results in disconnection once the player is
idle for a time.  The time is dependent on the ghostbust interval timer,
which is currently about 30 seconds, and the ping interval set by
etc/sysdef.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/