VNCviewer’s AutoReconnect Characteristics

[YY]

I had done some tests of the autoreconnect feature of vncviewer, and found some more of its characteristic. The test was done with Vncviewer 1.0.8., and all the test were talking about Direction Connection.
(Yes, I know the current release is 1.0.9.6, but this test was done long time ago)

1. The "AutoReconnect" feature, in fact, CAN BE FUNCTION, BUT NOT EXACTLY AS WHAT WE THINK IT SHOULD BE.
　　I will say, its real meaning is: "AutoReconnect of Dropped Connection"
　　That means if an ESTABLISHED connection is dropped, the viewer will try to establish the connection automatically again.

　　But during the initial of a connection, IT WILL NOT RETRY A NON-SUCCESSFUL CONNECTION.

Unlike the autoreconnect of server (winvnc.exe), which does make Autoreconnect for establishing a connection to a listening viewer.


2. Even considering as "AutoReconnect of Dropped Connection", it still has a problem:
　　the viewer is TOO EARLY TO RECONNECT and/or TOO FAST TO GIVE UP.

　　With the default setting, the viewer will try to reconnect IMMEDIATLEY and ONCE ONLY. If the reconnection fail, it will termiate.
With this condition, it is almost 100% the VNCviewer will be terminated if the connection is dropped.


3. The AutoReconnect feature is only available in command line. To avoid the viewer to reconnect too early, you may specify a delay time (in second), such as:

　　vncviewer.exe -autoreconnect 15 -connect remote_host:5500

This will instruct the viewer to reconnect 15 sec. after the connection dropped.


4. By default, once the viewer fail to reconnect to a remote host, it will give up. This is the setting at VNCviewer's "Options ..." -- "number of times the reconnect is ......" (in 1.0.9.x, the wording is changed as “Reconnection Attempts). Change this value from 0 to 10 (for e.g), will cause the viewer to retry the connection for 10 times before give up.

If working with the command line "-autoreconnect 15" option, you may have a result of:
　　For each 15 sec interval, try reconnection until success, or give up after 10 failure.

UNFORTUNATELY, this "number of times the reconnect is ......" is not available at command line. You must set this value once and save it as default, so that when vncviewer is started at command line, it will get this value at OPTIONS.VNC



5. In the furtue version of the viewer, I do hope to see that:
　　- the "-Autoreconnect" option is availalble inside GUI,
　　- the "number of times the reconnect is ......" is available as command line option.
　　- this "-Autoreconnect" feature also workable to initiate a fresh connection.

[B]

No kidding?

I had not noticed this problem, but it seems pretty big to me!

(I've done most of my usage in 1.0.8.0 with a modified ChunkVNC setup.)

If YY's test is accurate, I too would ask that the behavior be changed. I would prefer that "autoreconnect" always be trying to connect.