Problem: Storm of zero-length IP connections

[David Arnstein <arnstein at panix dot com>]

I have a recurring problem with cygwin-xfree.  I am currently running
the latest version of all cygwin and xfree binaries, including
Xfree86-xserv 4.2.0-25.  I have been having this problem for several
versions back, though.  I am running Windows 2000 Professional service
pack 3.  My Dell computer has an 866 MHz Pentium III CPU and 256 MBytes
of SDRAM.

The problem is that for no apparent reason, my computer will begin
making IP connections to consecutive ports and transmitting zero bytes. 
Localhost port 3795 to localhost port 3796, then localhost port 3796 to
localhost port 3797, etc.  The connections come serveral times per
second and use up most of my CPU power.  I think that my network
bandwidth is affected too, but I can't prove it.

I don't know if those port connections are TCP or UDP, my firewall
(Norton Internet Security) doesn't tell me in its log file.

Today I was able to halt the connection storm by closing X11 windows one
by one, until a certain xterm window was closed.  It seemed to be the
culprit, but I don't know why.  The window was idle at the time.

Here is my startup script for cygwin-xfree:
rm -rf /tmp/.X11-unix
XWin -screen 0 1280 1024 -ac -nopn -clipboard &
sleep 5
twm &
xsetroot -solid navy
xterm -n `hostname` -j -ls -sb -sl 500 -rightbar +cn -cb \
    -bg black -fg white -geometry +361+0 -e bash &

Has anyone else seen this problem?  Is there a workaround?

Thanks for any ideas!
--
David Arnstein
arnstein@pobox.com