Also there is still a branch (we need to merge the changes of the last monthes still) that replaces JBoss by netty created by BetaSteward last year.
https://github.com/magefree/mage/tree/Network_Upgradehttp://netty.io/But as I used this (netty) version some month ago (2015-09) to install it on the public server, there were some severe problems after some hours. I had to restart the server to get it working again. Also there were happening disconnects, maybe some less than with the JBoss version (but I'm not sure about that). So I decided to return to the old code base with JBoss to have a more stable release.
But maybe it's worth to give it a new try.
An alternate way to go to improve the network situation could also be to find out and fix the reason(s) the reconnect after a disconnect does not work half of the time.
This would aready improve the situation a lot. But it's very hard to get that problems clear.
So we are always looking for developers that have knowledge about network protocols/handling, that can analyse / fix that problems.