Notice that the engine did blow away its connection when you restarted. However, the client side still has the port and will do nothing until it attempts to send and notes the port is down.
If you cannot get them to do anything, my only suggestion would be an alert that triggers if nothing sent in a while Then run a script to see if in FIN_WAIT_2. If so, cycle the thread. Then the next time the vendor tries to send he will re-establish.
Of course, if you could somehow cycle his side, that would be better.
I would have my network people put a sniffer on that system, and record exactly what is going on. Once you have the proof that they are not doing wht they are required to do IAW the RFC, they would have to fix it.
Of course, if for some reason it were on our side, we would have to do the same thing. However, I would be hard pressed to believe that since we have dealt with this for many years.
Other than the above, all I can do is wish you luck. Its a bear and we’ve all been there 🙁
