how to keep alive a pptp connection being timed-out by remote router?

mfcarroll · 02-16-2005, 09:19 PM

I'm connecting to a remote lan using pptp. The connection works fine (standard set up as per pptpclient.sourceforge.net/howto-debian.phtml) but the router at the other end (over which i have no control) drops the connection if it's inactive for only a few minutes, which can be really frustrating. Does anyone know how I can keep the connection alive, e.g. setup a ping to the remote router every few minutes while the connection is up... I don't know how to do this. Or maybe there's another way?

Thanks for your help
Matthew

perfect_circle · 02-17-2005, 08:03 AM

in my /etc/ppp/options in slackware i found this option:

Code:

# If this option is given, pppd will send an LCP echo-request frame to
# the peer every n seconds. Under Linux, the echo-request is sent when
# no packets have been received from the peer for n seconds. Normally
# the peer should respond to the echo-request by sending an echo-reply.
# This option can be used with the lcp-echo-failure option to detect
# that the peer is no longer connected.
# lcp-echo-interval 30

# If this option is given, pppd will presume the peer to be dead if n
# LCP echo-requests are sent without receiving a valid LCP echo-reply.
# If this happens, pppd will terminate the connection.  Use of this
# option requires a non-zero value for the lcp-echo-interval parameter.
# This option can be used to enable pppd to terminate after the physical
# connection has been broken (e.g., the modem has hung up) in
# situations where no hardware modem control lines are available.
# lcp-echo-failure 4

You may use the lcp-echo-interval, if you use the pppd.