# Start, Stop and Close a Connection

Before consuming messages, the Message Consumer client must "start" the connection. If you wish to temporarily suspend message delivery, you can "stop" the connection. When a client application exits, all open connections must be "closed."

See Create a Message Consumer for more details about Message Consumers.

Unused open connections are eventually closed, but they do consume resources that could be used for other applications. Closing a connection also closes any sessions created by the connection.

See the "start," "stop" and "close" methods for the Java `Connection` object, the C `tibemsConnection` type, and the C# `Connection` object.

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