Do TCP sockets automatically close after some time if no data is sent?

Question

I have a client server situation where the client opens a TCP socket to the server, and sometimes long periods of time will pass with no data being sent between them. I have enc

Answer 1

It's more secure to use Keep-alive option (SO_KEEPALIVE under linux), to prevent disconnect due to inactivity, but this may generate some extra packets.

This sample code do it under linux:

int val = 1;
....
// After creating the socket
if (setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_KEEPALIVE, (char *)&val, sizeof(val)))                   
    fprintf(stderr, "setsockopt failure : %d", errno);

Regards.