I've just modified Netty so that Channel.close() in channelConnected handler method can close the connection immediately not causing the too many open files error, and started to wonder if you really want to suspend accepting an incoming connection instead of closing them quickly. Even if you suspended an accept operation, the incoming connections are accepted by the operating system and hold in the backlog of the server socket. If the backlog is full, further connection attempt from the client will fail. When you resume the accept operation, the oldest connections will be served while the latest ones have been failed. I'm not sure this is the expected behavior. I would close the connection so that the client can retry later and all connections are served anyway rather than being timed out due to the full backlog. WDYT? View the original post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4231220#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...