Detect RPC connection loss from server-side on Windows

Question

Is there any way to check the status of the RPC connection from the server-side? I am looking for a way to detect if the connection from the client is lost, be it client crash or other connectivity issues.

Answer 1

Use Context Handles for managing server state between calls for a particular client. RPC uses keep-alive's to detect client disconnects and will execute your context handle rundown routine if the client disconnects.

Answer 2

Mo Flanagan's answer is the best IMHO. Some more context.

If you're using binding handles, there is no way of tracking state across RPC calls and the concept of a "client disconnect" is essentially meaningless - you still need to return from the RPC call.

If you're using context handles, then the RPC runtime library will call the _rundown function when the client disconnects.

When that routine is called, the server can clean up whatever it needs to.