"The solution suggested by Stevens... The problem with this is..."

I see no problem with it. But perhaps I am missing something.

"... an application is expected to tune the backlog..."

Two simple applications I use everday called tcpserver/sslserver and tcpclient meet this expectation.

See "-b" and "-c" switches.

Has the author looked at Stevens' own example?

http://www.icir.org/christian/sock.html