Method to determine the active or idle state of a connection

摘要

Described herein is a method of performing idle detection for a connection in a network. The connection is monitored for the arrival of data and the arrival rate is compared with a predetermined value. If the arrival rate is less than the predetermined value, the connection is considered to be idle. If the connection is active and an idle detection timer expires, the status of the connection is checked to see if it is 'ACTIVE' or 'IDLE'. If the connection is 'ACTIVE', a counter is decremented and checked to see if it has been decremented to zero. If it has, the counter is reset to its maximum value and the status of the connection is 'IDLE'. This state is stored and the idle detection cycle ends.