Lots of TIME_WAIT connections in netstat (Windows Server 2008)

Question

I'm having some issues on a Windows 2008 server with some network connections not going through. For instance, in a web application on the server, we need to open a socket connection to another server, and this fails sometimes with the following message:

Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted

I looked up the error, which led me to this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa560610(v=bts.20).aspx, which indicates that it might be TCP/IP port exhaustion.

When I perform netstat -n, I get tons of TIME_WAIT connections on port 80.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

Solution

All the remote ports in range of 32768 - 61000 are in TIME_WAIT state and don't release even few tens of minutes after application termination. Our server was running for almost two years without restart.

I have found following: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553549

Comments

[bradenb]

Years later--trying to figure out some TCP problems on an old server--this was a huge help to me. Thank you.