you need to either read() or write() on a connection to be informed that the connection was terminated or half-closed. My server application works perfectly, it reacts immediately to any state change. Did not require any special code, just monitor the read and write ends, which is what one does anyway. (Yep, this is API specific behaviour of course, but it's the only sane approach IMO, since the termination event must be sent in a synchronization with the actual channel interaction).

Of course, if you're not checking for updates on both directions (read + write) because you're blocked on some blocking interface (either on the same socket or different I/O port or computation), your server won't react. The API is not to fault. The mistake was to write blocking code.

That is the difference between dirty batch scripts and systems programming.