Abstract: Methods and systems are disclosed that effectively manage sockets in client-to-server connections at the application level to enhance the availability of sockets by timely closing idle sockets. This reduces the role of the TCP-level management to a single listen thread on a listen socket. Connected sockets are placed into the application's socket pool that is managed by a configurable number of worker threads. The proposed methods and systems are intended to prevent a situation where many connections are opened, thereby using all the network memory on the machine.