Hi Folks

Just recently something has been keeping my ISDN connection to BTinternet
active, even when the connection has been totally inactive at this end for
some hours. :-(   The connection was only going down when BTinternet cut it
at their end after 4 hours..!

I see a 92Byte packet incoming & outgoing from my router every few seconds
and this keeps the connection alive.  The only way I can get the router to
auto-disconnect is to reduce the 'inactivity period' setting to only 20
seconds, any longer and the connection doesn't remain inactive long enough
to auto-disconnect.  Having the connection drop after only 20 seconds is a
royal pain 'cause reading a web page always takes longer than that. :-/

I am using a 3COM ISDN LANmodem, even with it completely disconnected from
my LAN, the ISDN connection to BTinternet stays active - thus I assume it
must be something coming in from outside that my router replies to & this
keeps the connection 'active'..?

This has only started happening recently - up until about a week ago (when I
first noticed the long connection uptimes in the router's log.) I had the
'inactivity period' set to 3 minutes and it dropped the connection after 3
minutes idle time, no problem.

Anybody got any idea what's doing this..?   Is there some freebie software
out there I can use to have a look at the packet(s) - I can have the router
forward 'unsolicited packets' to a machine so I can take a look at them.

Maybe I can get my ISP to block these particular packets if it's causing
folk's connections to stay up when they're not using them - it's a waste of
hardware their end - although I guess it may be a LANmodem foible. :-(

TIA & Ciao...

[UK]_Nick...
-- 
Nick M V Salmon  Master Mariner  MN(Retd.)

My four initials@btinternet.com