> Rather than using a ping to keep the connection up, you might instead 
> investigate the lcp-echo-interval option for pppd.  Just a thought.

fantastic! I did have a quick look for it in the manpage, and didn't
find it, however it was in the source code, and pppd is now hapilly
running with that option! Thanks! This is a much more elegant solution
than 'while ping; do sleep; done'

d
-- 
David Leonard                            BE(Comp)/BCompSc 5th year student
The University of Queensland             s160828@student.uq.edu.au