FIN_WAIT_2 is the state a TCP connection enters after it has sent a FIN, and received an ACK of that FIN – it has done its half of the graceful connection shutdown. Now the connection is waiting for the remote to send a FIN to shutdown his half of the connection.
In the old days the only way out of a FIN_WAIT_2 on AIX was to reboot the box or cycle the vendor side. Now ahat the engine does if restarted is to isse SO_REUSEADDR which effectively shoots the port. I don’t think this works on HPUX, at laest it disn’t use to.
I think you should have the vendor re-read RFC 793.
Charlie
