average Dialup ISP inactivity timeout

[Felecha]

Anyone know offhand what an average timeout for modem inactivity might be for an average ISP? I'm writing an application at work that will open a dialup connection when there's a problem in our system and generate an email to the Sys Admin to inform that a problem has happened. I thought I should maybe give the connection a certain amount of time until I send it a command to disconnect. Then I thought, just now, well, what's the timeout from the ISP anyway? I suppose it varies out there in the world. Just wondering about an average range. I'm not trying to do a keep-alive routine, letting it close is fine with me. It would mean I don't have to program a disconnect.

It's been years since I had a Dialup of my own, so I have no one to call

 

[Felecha]

I just saw on a webpage from a Google search that you can set the timeout yourself in Modem Properties. I had forgotten that. But don't ISP's have their own timeouts from their end?

 

[Garion]

Most ISP's will time out connections anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Some don't even have timeouts.

There's really no reason to keep the connection open once you've sent your e-mail. It just ties up your phone line and the phone line at the ISP that doesn't need to be. In the end, it makes the ISP service more expensive than it needs to be. Just write your app to disconnect the modem connection once the messages is delivered.

- G

 

[Felecha]

The trouble is that the messages often come in flurries of as many as 40 to 50 in a blink of an eye, as they are the result of system interactions that are all pertinent to the diagnostics. To log them is no ploblem, and to send them to a mail server on the system itself is no problem, but to dialup and go offsite it would be awful to connect and disconnect every time like that. I was thinking of a couple of minutes open time, since within that time we have often seen more than one action start a flurry of messages, and that can be controlled in Modem Properties, it seems. My question was one of curiosity, not so much a critical thing for the app.

Most of the time the machine runs and runs for days and days without a peep.