Long-running connections stop working through a FreeBSD 5.1R firewall/NAT box...

[Chuck Swiger]

Douglas Carmichael wrote:
> HTTP connections across the firewall work fine (ie. web browsing) and I can
> maintain a connection to a streaming radio station just fine from my
> PowerBook inside the firewall, but AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger seem to
> stay up for a while and then just unexpectedly disconnect (the client
> has to reconnect). What could be the problem?

You're using NAT.  NAT implementations have a finite number of dynamic rules 
available and/or time out old connections, thus dropping long-running persistent 
connections.  (That behavior isn't desirable, but is "normal" for NAT....)

-- 
-Chuck