Comment 1 for bug 164288

http://www.sunmanagers.org/pipermail/summaries/2006-January/007068.html says:

"""CLOSE_WAIT means that the local end of the connection has received
a FIN from the other end, but the OS is waiting for the program at the
local end to actually close its connection.

The problem is your program running on the local machine is not closing
the socket. It is not a TCP tuning issue. A connection can (and quite
correctly) stay in CLOSE_WAIT forever while the program holds the
connection open.

Once the local program closes the socket, the OS can send the FIN to
the remote end which transitions you to LAST_ACK while you wait for
the ACK of the FIN. Once that is received, the connection is finished
and drops from the connection table (if you're end is in CLOSE_WAIT
you do _not_ end up in the TIME_WAIT state)."""