Do I need to heartbeat to keep a TCP connection open?

Question

I have two components that that communicate via TCP/IP. Component A acts as a server/listener and Component B is the client. The two should communicate as quickly as possi

Answer 1

If your components:

• are in a conventional wired network
• there are no firewalls or NAT routers between them
• neither of them crash

then you do not need to have a heartbeat.

If any of these assumptions are false (I am looking at you, GPRS!), a heartbeat becomes necessary rather quickly.