In message <200410251933.i9PJXDck017177@herd.plethora.net>, Peter Seebach write
s:
>In message <20041025193111.D175B1AE80@berkshire.research.att.com>, "Steven M. 
>B
>ellovin" writes:
>>It really sounds a lot like a NAT or firewall dropping state.  It all 
>>depends on that box's timer -- my home NAT has a long-enough timeout 
>>that I have no trouble; at my office, I have to run a sleep/echo script 
>>to keep the connection alive.  And a hang is exactly what I see if the 
>>connection times out on the firewall -- or rather, it appears to be a 
>>hang, but it would turn into a "connection timed out" if I wait long 
>>enough.
>
>Right.
>
>But why does it happen to me, but not to my friend sitting next to me at the
>coffee shop, using the same wireless network and same NAT, connecting to the
>same server?  It is a *mystery*!  :)
>
different keepalive timeouts?  A tunneled pop connection that's polled 
often enoug?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb