<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >( PORTFW ) - IP Masquerading with PORTFWing seems to break when my line is idle for long periods</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Frequently Asked Questions" HREF="faq.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="( Performance ) - IP Masquerading seems slow" HREF="masq-performace.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="( PORTFW - Locally ) - I can't reach my PORTFWed server from the INTERNAL lan" HREF="portfw-local.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="masq-performace.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 7. Frequently Asked Questions</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="portfw-local.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="PORTFW-ISSUES" ></A >7.18. ( PORTFW ) - IP Masquerading with PORTFWing seems to break when my line is idle for long periods</H1 ><P >If you have a DSL or Cablemodem, this behavior is unfortunately quite common. Basically your ISP is putting your connection into a very low priority queue to better service non-idle connections. The problem is that some enduser's connections will actually be taken OFFLINE until some traffic from the user's DSL/Cablemodem connection awakens the ISP's hardware.</P ><P ><P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P >Some DSL installations can take an idle connection OFFLINE and only be checked for activity once every 30 seconds or so. </P ></LI ><LI ><P >Some Cablemodem setups can set an idle connection into a low priority queue and only be checked for activity every minute or so.</P ></LI ></UL ></P ><P >What do I recommend to do? Ping your default gateway every 30 seconds. To do this, edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file and add the following to the bottom of the file:</P ><P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><FONT COLOR="#000000" ><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" > ping -i 30 100.200.212.121 > /dev/null &</PRE ></FONT ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></P ><P >Replace the 100.200.212.121 with your default router (upstream router).</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="masq-performace.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="portfw-local.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >( Performance ) - IP Masquerading seems slow</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="faq.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >( PORTFW - Locally ) - I can't reach my PORTFWed server from the INTERNAL lan</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >