Metered connections

[Baughn]

Here's a scenario:

I'm using mosh on a laptop, through tethering to a cellphone. I close the laptop, but the cellphone retains its own connection. In this case, what happens to mosh?

If the answer is, "It keeps sending UDP packets to the phone, in hopes of sometime getting a reply", then I'd like to add a feature request for it not to do that. Surprisingly, it seems that mosh can add up to megabytes of traffic in a fairly small number of days.

The client should be able to resume the connection from its side, once it awakens from sleep nigh-eternal.

[eminence]

What does "close the laptop" mean? If it means that the laptop enters a suspend state, then mosh is not doing anything, as the machine is suspended.

[Baughn]

That's true for the mosh instance on the laptop. Not so much the one on the server.

[eminence]

Ah, good point. Yes, the server will continue to send packages to the last known address of the client, at least for a little while. The exact timeout is specified by SERVER_ASSOCIATION_TIMEOUT here in network.h#L137

(or 40 seconds)

[Baughn]

If there's already such a timeout, then I have nothing to worry about. It's been a little difficult to tell.

40 seconds? The only thing I might as for then is documentation. :)

[keithw]

You might also be interested in the lowbandwidth branch of mosh (https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/tree/lowbandwidth), for extreme low consumption. It is compatible with normal mosh, but if you want the benefits, you'll need to compile the mosh-client and mosh-server from this branch.