MySQL Connections causing server went away, nothing in processlist - mysql

Question

I have a large amount of connections but when I issue a show full processlist I am not showing anything close to the connections I see. Are these connections orphans of some sort? I tried the flush hosts command and the connections persist, even with a reboot of the server and also restarting the mysql server.
I believe these connections are causing issues with making new connections to the database. User's are getting a "server went away" error. How do I clear these?
See commands below:
mysql> show status like '%onn%';
+--------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+-------+
| Aborted_connects | 5 |
| Connections | 11743 |
| Max_used_connections | 24 |
| Ssl_client_connects | 0 |
| Ssl_connect_renegotiates | 0 |
| Ssl_finished_connects | 0 |
| Threads_connected | 6 |
+--------------------------+-------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show full processlist;
+-------+---------+----------------------+--------------------+---------+-------+-------+-----------------------+
| Id | User | Host | db | Command | Time | State | Info |
+-------+---------+----------------------+--------------------+---------+-------+-------+-----------------------+
| 4494 | rode | localhost:43411 | NULL | Sleep | 11159 | | NULL |
| 4506 | rode | localhost:43423 | information_schema | Sleep | 11159 | | NULL |
| 4554 | rode | localhost:43511 | performance_schema | Sleep | 11112 | | NULL |
| 11500 | ass | serv:1243 | Home-Tech | Sleep | 0 | | NULL |
| 11743 | root | localhost | NULL | Query | 0 | NULL | show full processlist |
| 11744 | ass | out:6070 | Home-Tech | Sleep | 4 | | NULL |
| 11745 | ass | out:6074 | HTGlobal | Sleep | 8 | | NULL

Answer 1

The MySQL server has gone away (error 2006) has two main causes
Server timed out and closed the connection. To fix, check that “wait_timeout” mysql variable in your my.cnf configuration file is large enough.
Server dropped an incorrect or too large packet. If mysqld gets a packet that is too large or incorrect, it assumes that something has gone wrong with the client and closes the connection. To fix, you can increase the maximal packet size limit “max_allowed_packet” in my.cnf file, eg. set max_allowed_packet = 128M, then sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart.
there are two main ways to fix this. if the above change doesn't there may be an issue with your linux or windows mysql database server; you either need to increase ram on your server or watch it's process.
is this on a windows or linux box?