My ISP drops idle connection too quickly

[Sage]

Crazy, John, crazy - above was mine.
But, in the interim, I may have some more definitive indications for you to ponder.
Whilst I WAS logged-in, and replying to a PM, my ISP dropped my connection (I'm still on DUN - they are entitled to do so). I reconnected, but my log-in status with your board was also dropped and I found myself in limboland. ALL my JM-Puppy tabs had died and refused even to reload. This cannot be right?
Over to you.

[BarryK]

I seem to be lucky. My ISP is totally reliable. Never have dropouts, just about always connect on first try (last time had to redial was about 6 months ago). They never disconnect me if I stay online beyond the official limit of 3 hours (they say disconnection after that will only happen if their network is too busy).
My ISP is Dodo, here in Australia.
Oh yeah, and I use Gkdial.

...I realise this is off-topic!

[Sage]

Lucky you, Barry! Things get far more congested over here on DUN lines. I get at least two hours (the official limit) if there's continuous activity, eg downloading, but if I pause to think too long, their 'inactivity detector' tends to cut in fairly quickly.
Yes, Gkdial seems to be OK again in 1.0.7 but is more quirky to set up than in earlier versions?

[BarryK]

Lucky you, Barry! Things get far more congested over here on DUN lines. I get at least two hours (the official limit) if there's continuous activity, eg downloading, but if I pause to think too long, their 'inactivity detector' tends to cut in fairly quickly.

Doesn't Mozilla have a "keep alive" thing? ..I think its something that will make the isp think the connection is still busy when you aren't doing anything.
Or, is that a feature of pppd? I don't recall which one.

[Sage]

Thanks for the tip. I'm useless at SW!

[drongo]

If you're not logged in the logos on the left don't go brown when a new message is received. (I tried this in Opera, IE and Firefox 1.5 running on Windows 2000 and XP) (I can't use Puppy for browsing because I haven't sorted out my wireless card yet - it works OK if I run a long lead to the router.)

So, if you log on you won't have to spend lots of time trying to work out where the new posts are.

[Sage]

Couldn't find a 'stay connected' option in Mozilla? Suggestions, please.

[Flash]

I don't know exactly what it does, but in Windows Mozilla, under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced HTTP Networking, is an "Enable Keep-Alive" checkbox.

[Sage]

Thanks for that. Tend to use Firefox and Eudora/Pegasus in 'doze and Firefox/Sylpheed in Puppy.

[BarryK]

I don't know exactly what it does, but in Windows Mozilla, under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced HTTP Networking, is an "Enable Keep-Alive" checkbox.

Puppy Mozilla has that, and I think it is enabled by default.

[Guest]

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
while true
do
  sleep 300
  ping -c 1 google.com
done

[babbs]

If I step away from my keyboard for an period of time, I tell Thunderbird to check my email accounts every minute...

My ISP drops me automatically once I hit 8 hours in a session, no matter what I'm doing. (I usually only hit that 4 or 5 times in a row...) When I get dropped, I just redial...

[Sage]

The once-a-minute trick seems to work, but has the drawbacks of switching my window to the emailer when I'm online and of popping up the dialler when not. Most inconvenient.

[babbs]

The once-a-minute trick seems to work, but has the drawbacks ...

Since I always have Thunderbird running while I'm online, its pretty simple for me to change the settings from check every 10 minutes to every minute when I walk away for a while... Sometimes the 'down-and-dirty' method isn't the best method, but... In this situation, its what gets me by.