SSH disconnects very troubling

[Nikos Vassiliadis]

On Tuesday 04 December 2007 02:40:35 Anne Moore wrote:
> Thanks, Kevin. This may well work with the SSH, but it's actually
> disconnecting all my clients, telnet, Oracle, etc. There is a config for
> telnet, but nothing for Oracle (that I know of). Also, ldap, etc. It's
> the strangest thing!!

No it's not strange. There is a firewall between the hosts,
which drops the connections after some time of inactivity.

You can generate keepalive packets for every TCP connection
between your FreeBSD box and the world using ipfw. A rule
like:
allow tcp from any to any keep-state
will effectively keep all TCP connections alive.

Two things:
1) If you are not familiar with ipfw, read the manual before
	loading the ipfw module. Otherwise, you'll be locked
	out of your box.
2) I don't know if the above rules fits your security policy.
	Or the services your FreeBSD box provides. Modify as
	needed.

HTH, Nikos