Hanging auth / CLOSE_WAIT connections

[jhs@MennoLink.org]

I have seen this problem discussed before, but don't recall a solution.
After running my server for any amount of time, netstat shows an
accumulating number of connections to the 'auth' port in a perpetual
CLOSE_WAIT state.

Here is an example snipped from netstat:

tcp       10      0 www.mennolink.org:auth  river.netrover.co:38360 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp       10      0 www.mennolink.org:auth  mail4.transport.c:29734 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp       10      0 www.mennolink.org:auth  shell.net-thing.n:12305 CLOSE_WAIT

Currently the server has been up for 6 days and shows 48 such entries,
which won't go away until I reboot.  Is this a bad thing?  It is annoying
to have to wait for netstat to look up all of the host names of these
old entries just so I can see the current ones.  How can I get these things
to timeout, if they don't close down normally?

Recently I upgraded to the 2.2.6 kernel and reinstalled the networking
package (from slackware distribution).  I was sort of expecting this to
go away, but no such luck.

Suggestions?

-- 
Jon Harder
jhs@MennoLink.org