Network problem I discussed yesterday

[david at kramer.ne.mediaone.net (David Kramer)]

At the meeting yesterday I said I was having a problem ssh'ing to my
machine at home in that if both sides were idle for some short time, the
connection was lost.  I have done some more research and have more info:

- It does this with every protocol.   I opened up telnet to work and the
same things happens.  In fact, if I use Windows Netscape at work to get
my mail via IMAP, if I don't do anything for a while, then try to
add/del/move mail, it says server disconnected or something like that. 
If I try again it usually works.  Obviously my web server is unaffected,
as http is a connectionless protocol.  I am assuming mail connections
are happening fast enough that nothing is lost.

- The timeout happens at about one minute.  So if I am reading my mail
and my phone rings, I need to shell out of pine and run "top" so I'll
get enough IO so it doesn't time out.

- It would be nice to verify the problem is definitely on my end by
trying to access it from somewhere else, but this won't be practical for
a few days.

This sure smells like an ipchains problem.  I looked into the timeouts I
heard about for ipchains, but those are only for masquerading.  But I'm
not masquerading ssh, I'm connected to my linux server via it's public
name/address connected straight to the cablemodem through eth0 via.  Is
it still masquerading then?

If I were able to set up a chrooted test account, would someone be
willing to telnet in and see if it times out?  I would only do this with
a non-dialup account so I can put the IP explicitly in hosts.allow
though.

P.S.- I'll have the minutes of the meeting available for posting on the
website, including all 73 URL's mentioned, by Monday or Tuesday.  Who
should I send it to?  Jerry, did you ever get the email address of the
fortune teller?
-- 
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DDDD   David Kramer                    david at kramer.ne.mediaone.net
DK KD                                 http://kramer.ne.mediaone.net
DKK D  
DK KD  HYDROGEN: A colorless, odorless gas which,
DDDD   given enough time, turns into people.
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