Keeping connection alive with pinging

February 12, 2012 5:48 PM

My Windows Live Mail loses connection with Verizon Broadband Card, how can I create a constant ping to keep connection alive?

I spent 2 days with Dell on the phone trying to figure out why when using my laptop with Verizon Mobile Broadband card my Windows Live Mail loses the connection, I have to manually disconnect and reconnect the broadband card to send/receive emails after I have been connected a small amount of time. The final answer after checking all my settings with Live Mail was it was the broadband connection. I have been reading it is possible to set up a constant ping to keep connection alive to prevent this. What are the pros and cons and I need exact details how to do this and undo it if needed.

posted by sandyp to computers & internet (3 answers total)

Do you mean literally send pings? Because if you do, and if you're running windows, fire up a terminal and run "ping -t 8.8.8.8" - it'll send a ICMP echo request packets every second until you press CTRL-C in that window. I haven't run windows in many years, but you may be able to press ALT-F2 to get a dialogue box to type that command into if you're not familiar with running a terminal.

The are almost certainly programs available that will try and automate the task of keeping your connection active to stop it dropping, but as long as your ISP isn't doing something silly to pings on their network I can't imagine why there'd be any problems with just leaving "ping" running in the background.

I suspect that inactivity may not be the real culprit though, so secondly network traffic may not actually help. A network shouldn't be so fragile as to drop the connection in the way you describe. There are already various keep-alive elements in the mechanism to prevent this... YMMV.
posted by samworm at 3:25 AM on February 13, 2012

Whichever Verizon representative told you this was the problem was trying to get you off the phone. It's a ridiculous assertion that makes no sense. Insist that they replace your broadband card if they can't provide a real solution.
posted by odinsdream at 6:28 AM on February 13, 2012

(or Dell representative)
posted by odinsdream at 6:29 AM on February 13, 2012