How to turn TCP Keepalive off?

Question

I have a java application acting aa server and an android phone acting as a client. They are communicating over TCP sockets.

I often have the client sleep and when its buffer fills I want the wifi radio to be able to go to sleep. The problem is the client isn't sleeping. I noticed wireshark says my server is sending the a TCP KeepAlive packet approximately every half second so the wifi can't sleep. I've tried the following on the server and client.

connectionSocket.setKeepAlive(false);

But this appears to change nothing. I am using wireshark to analyze the traffic. Here is a screen shot of wireshark... the black lines indicate where my client is asleep and it's receieve buffer is full. Can I stop the keepAlive packets from being sent by the server?

Thanks!

Answer 1

TCP connections stay open until closed, the keep alive mechanism is here to detect connection failures.

Check out this link: Does a TCP socket connection have a "keep alive"?