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

What you call a heartbeat is useful when trying to set timeouts. Your socket may appear open, but the person on the other end may be suffering a BSOD. One of the easiest ways to detect defunct clients/servers is to set a timeout and make sure a message is received every so often.

Some people call them NOOPs(No Ops).

But no, they are not necessary to keep connection alive, only helpful to know what the status is.