Member Avatar for wfbiii

When users connect to the Internet via our company network, they do not get disconnected due to inactivity because many websites adware, etc. make it appear that the connection is active. Is there someway to force the Internet Connection to drop when say our 10 minute screen saver activates or some other way? Our uses all use dell workstations or laptops running XP Pro SP2 with at least 512 KB of RAM.

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A reliable way to drop "idle" Internet sessions without breaking production is to let the network equipment decide what is truly inactive, and to give IT a clear, testable plan to make exceptions for known services. asked for a forced drop; probed connection type; and raised the client-side option — all useful starting points.

Suggested practical workflow for IT:

  • Inventory critical services and endpoints that must remain connected (backups, FTP, VPNs, long-poll apps).
  • Turn on connection/session logging and collect a baseline (per-connection bytes/packets and last-activity timestamps). Use flow collectors (NetFlow/sFlow) or the firewall's connection table to separate sessions that transfer bytes from those that only send tiny keepalives.
  • Implement a network-side idle timeout for generic user traffic at a conservative value, and create explicit exceptions with longer timeouts for identified production IPs/ports or by protocol inspection.
  • Consider a proxy or HTTP layer that collapses/terminates persistent keepalive traffic from ad/telemetry endpoints so real downloads are unaffected.
  • Pilot the changes on a subset of users, monitor logs for false positives, then roll out.

Caveats: lowering idle timeouts can disrupt FTP data channels, VPNs, and long-lived web sockets — test and whitelist as needed. Collecting per-connection byte counters before changing timeouts is the single most effective way to avoid interrupting real work.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for jbennet

is it a dialup or LAN connection ?

Member Avatar for wfbiii

It's a LAN connection going through a Cisco Pix firewall.

Member Avatar for Spriggan

you could just set the power profile of their computer to turn off LAN connections when it goes to standby, then set standby @10 minutes.

Member Avatar for wfbiii

Thankyou. I'll work with my IT, but we will need to identify if FTP or an application or download is active, so we don't disconnect a production activity.

you could just set the power profile of their computer to turn off LAN connections when it goes to standby, then set standby @10 minutes.

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