[icqlib-dev] retrieving (extended) info and sending messages

[Erwin K. <erw...@ao...>]

hi, i came across a weird problem. i wrote a mini-client that has a
contact-list with uin's but no details for the contacts. so the first thing
the client does as soon as you go online (apart from sending the contact
list to the server and retrieving the online status of the contacts in the
list) is it tries to retrieve the info and the extended info of every
contact in the list, using icq_SendInfoReq() and icq_SendExtInfoReq().

of course if there are many contacts, i have to send out quite a few
requests at once. i noticed that only the first 5 requests are actually
processed (3 "basic" and 2 extended info requests), though i do receive the
notification of the requests, the actual data is never sent.

now, i have a mechanism that tries to re-request the info after 20 seconds
in case the process "failed". and here comes the strange thing... only after
i send the next keep-alive message (once every 2 minutes) the next 5
requests (3 basic and 2 extended) are being processed. and now comes the
weirdest thing of all: during this period, while the info-requests are
"stuck", i can't send messages! or in fact i DO get the notification,
seeming that the message was sent, but in fact it never arrived at the
recipient...

in fact EVERY task (like changing my online status to "away" or something)
fails... it's just ignored by the server... it seems that due to the load of
info-requests i sent, the server seems to ignore me (though sending
notifications) until the next keep-alive.

so i fiddled with my method of requesting info-requests. clearly if i remove
the whole mechanism of requesting "details", i never experience any problems
with sending messages. btw, the client i send to is ICQ2000b. ok, so what i
tried first was to send out the requests one by one, waiting for the
previous one to complete... but no such luck, it has to do with the
keep-alive message. so i added the keep-alive message after one request
succeeded successfully. that seemed to help a little... i could now send
messages right from the beginning, but still after sending 5 requests i
needed to wait a little longer.

so the next thing i tried was, send a request, wait for its completion, wait
10 seconds, then send the keep alive and after that request the next one...
that again seemed to improve things. but i am not sure what the correct
method is.

has anyone come across this? could this have something to do with occasional
reports of people saying that the messages they sent never arrived at the
recipient? maybe they requested details right before that, and now due to
"not sticking to the rules" the server refused to send messages? but
actually the messages could have been sent "direct" and the server does not
even know about them...? hmmm i am confused.

just thought i post this here, maybe this is a hint for you icqlib
developers, or maybe someone even knows what's going on and how to fix this?

cheers anyway

erwin kloibhofer
austria