Recently, a post to the Bugtraq mailing list by security researcher Zaraza reminded the community of a problem in inetd, the Internet Super-Server. Inetd times out after receiving a large amount of connections within one minute, and refuses all connections for ten minutes afterwards.

This isn't a new problem. Daniel J. Bernstein (DJB), the University of Illinois at Chicago professor known for his venomous tirades and clever coding solutions, stepped up to solve this issue years ago by creating a special software package called ucspi-tcp, consisting of tcpserver and tcpclient. True to DJB form, he distributes the package through a Web page that details exactly how crappy inetd is, and why ucspi-tcp is better.

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