On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Kim Hartlev wrote:

> I'm using an ISP that only allows 2 hours of idle time - after that you're
> logged of the gateway.

I presume you don't have a simple static IP bridging setup.  Is this
DHCP?  PPP via a tunneling protocol such as PPPoE or PPTP?

> My old setup:
> I started out by pinging my old firewall every 1 hour from an external
> machine but this approach didn't help against maintenance on the ISP servers
> (They just log you off).

I take it this isn't because pings don't work, but just because doing it
from "outside" is fundamentally unstable (it stops when the route is
lost).

> To get arround this I made a small perl script (see below) on the FW that
> logged on to the gateway every 1 hour instead. 

It looks like it's just making an HTTP request, which isn't really
"logging on".  Does this work because of some sort of dial-on-demand
capability?  Obviously it needs a route before it can access the server.

> Are there any easy way to make this kind of keep alive functionality on the
> m0n0wall?

The keepalive per se wouldn't be difficult; the issue is how to restore
connectivity once it's been lost.  The best approach would be to have a
dial-on-demand capability, usable either with or without keepalives.  In
the former case, it would "redial" as needed; in the latter it would only
establish the connection when needed.

					Fred Wright