-BIOs) are kept. A completely negotiated B<SSL_SESSION> is not freed but left
-untouched for the underlying B<SSL_CTX>.
+BIOs) are kept.
+
+=head1 NOTES
+
+SSL_clear is used to prepare an SSL object for a new connection. While all
+settings are kept, a side effect is the handling of the current SSL session.
+If a session is still B<open>, it is considered bad and will be removed
+from the session cache, as required by RFC2246. A session is considered open,
+if L<SSL_shutdown(3)|SSL_shutdown(3)> was not called for the connection
+or at least L<SSL_set_shutdown(3)|SSL_set_shutdown(3)> was used to
+set the SSL_SENT_SHUTDOWN state.