Is Socket.Available guaranteed to throw a SocketException on disconnect?

Question

The information below is given on the MSDN article on the Socket.Available property.

If the remote host shuts down or closes the connection, Available can throw a SocketException.

The keyword here being can. My question is:

Is Socket.Available just as reliable as Socket.Receive() to throw a SocketException on disconnect, and more directly, under what circumstances will Socket.Available not throw a SocketException?

Answer 1

Internally Available is calling the native method ioctlsocket with the command FIONREAD, if that function returns SOCKET_ERROR then it raises a SocketException.

So to answer your question Socket.Available not throw a SocketException when a call to ioctlsocket could be made without error.