No doubt I am going to feel really dumb when someone points out what a trivial problem this is to fix... but go ahead, I can take it!

My home computer is connected to the internet through a dial-up connection. This connection stays "up" for about five minutes and then disconnects if I do not actively use the connection to send or receive data. Because I read the bbs by opening up multiple windows (one for each thread, as many as 50 windows at once) I spend long periods of time just processing those windows without using the dial-up connection. Also, sometimes I will spend quite a bit of time attempting to craft a semi-intelligent post to place on the bbs. I fully expect to lose my connection before I finish writing this one.

I am running Windows 98se, and Netscape 4.78, although I don't think the Netscape has anything to do with it.

In control panel/internet options/connections/settings/advanced, I have tried different values for the "Disconnect if idle for..." box, and none of them correspond with when it actually disconnects. So I unchecked that option so it shouldn't disconnect at all, now. I unchecked the box for "Disconnect when connection may no longer be needed" and that had no effect. The latest thing I tried (and this may have worked but I don't know because I just now accidentally opened a new netscape window and thus reset the "countdown to disconnect" timer) was to tell Netscape to check my mail every four minutes instead of the previous eight minutes, four minutes being less than the time the connection would stay active before.

Do I have something strange going on here, or am I just too stupid to figure out how to do it right?

tanstaafl.

What you are experiencing is what all dial-up ISPs do - they disconnect you if there is no activity for a few mins. Theres not much you can do from your side as its monitored from their side.

What you could do is download a piece of software that will ping the server every few minutes, but these are frowned upon by the ISPs and are seen as abuse.

Another thing to watch for are additional phone services, such as call waiting. Any tones or signals will crash existing connections.

In reply to:

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What you could do is download a piece of software that will ping the server every few minutes

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pre-broadband, I used to run yahoo messanger or some such in the background so at to maintain traffic and avoid the connection dropping out.

The connection still dropped out though - just not as often.

When I was using dial-up, it kept knocking me out. When I learned that it was due to a noisy phoneline I reduced the modem speed, and then it worked flawlessly except that it was noticeably slower. That's when I was forced to go to broadband. Apparently in our area there is a lot of noise in the phonelines.

I could be wrong but i thought the error correction on all modems v32 (33.6) and higher would correct for any call waiting tones. Surely his modem isnt that old.

Alternatively, bookmark this. Open a browser window, point it there and minimise.

I used to use a pinger to keep the connection active. Try This

Yup, that was what I was going to suggest, Lectric. A keep-alive utility.

Thing is, I thought Doug was already using programs that did this sort of thing, for example, a mail-checker program or ICQ (or the mail-checker feature in ICQ).

Doug, when your dialup connection times out, do you have ICQ running? What about the Netscape program that checks your mail continuously?

I use outlook refreshing every 5-10 minutes to keep my connection alive.

Doug, when your dialup connection times out, do you have ICQ running?

Not on my home computer. ICQ gives me just the opposite problem -- if ICQ is running, then even if I don't want to be on the internet, it will dial in and connect me anyway. Since ICQ goes into "connect" mode by default, that means I can't "automate" it and put it in my startup menu.

I suppose I could just load ICQ whenever I load Netscape...

tanstaafl.

Since ICQ goes into "connect" mode by default

That's what the ICQ NetDetect thing is supposed to fix. It should be the default action.