Idle time / disconnection
 

I keep getting disconnected after 15 mins despite being on an Unlimited scheme , thereby basically making downloads & larger e-mails a waste of time .
That little catch must have been in the VERY small print - is there a way of extending or eliminating this time-out ?

Regards

Are you on dial up or are you on Broadband ? if your on dial up i think disconnection is every hour, if your on broadband it should be only when theres a problem ...

if your on dial up and getting disconnected every 15 mins id phone CS and ask them to help :)

I'm on dial up , and guess what ? No advice from NTL . Someone at the call centre said there was a solution but wasn't allowed to tell me what it was !

Er.... isn't the ONLY time you "get dis-connected after 15 mins" if you don't use the PC for that time .... I can go the full 2 hours while downloading without problems ?!?!

(I AM on the £10 a month 0800 No., too) ?!?

IIRC the 15 minute cut-off applies to Outlook Express, so you time out while composing e-mails on-line. The workaround is to set your mail to "auto check" at intervals of less than 15 minutes.

Gaz

It's not specific to OE, Gaz, it's just that ntl world cut you off on dialup if you're inactive too long (can't remember the actual cutoff time). This is a common practice with 24/7 ISPs.

The solution, as Gaz said, is to set your mail reader to check for messages before the cutoff time elapses. You're not allowed to do this, of course, and I didn't say it, and I wouldn't advise you to do it, but who can complain because you want to check your email?

Er, Mick, if you're downloading, your connection _is_ active.

k guys i'm here.

being on dial up meself i can answer this one.

to keep on line till the maximum cut off time of 2 hours you need to keep outlook open with a frequent send and recieve cycle. mine does it every minuite and this is great for me but i would recommend a cycle of about 5 mins depending on the amount of mail that you receive. this needs to be less than 15 mins so i would go to a maximum of 10 mins between send and recieves. all you do then is keep OE open and hey presto connected for 2 hours.

it cannot be extended past this cut off. i know coz i have tried alsorts but i have found that it always dials straight back in again so it shouldnt cause a major problem.

any more q's just ask me.

i'm usually around here somewhere.

Yeah, I'VE tried putting the Lap-top CLOCK 'Back' an hour 'an things to TRY and stop getting dis-connected, but it's .... probably ?!? .... impossible :(

you cant kid it unfortunatley.

believe me i've tried everything.

There are a fews to keep connected if you have been idle for 15 minutes:

• set OE to check for email every few minutes and leave it open
• open a self refreshing internet page (make sure it refreshes before 15 mins though ;) )
• Download a stay connected program (you can set these to send/recieve packets of data every so often)

There maybe other ways but that is all i can think of so far

I had this problem after I downloaded the ntl-freedom package. I 'phoned the helpline and the trained monkey on the other end told me that it's now set to disconnect if you're idle for ten minutes and that there's no way of stopping it.
Although he did give me the tip about setting outlook to check mail every five mins or so.
Do ntl actually want anyone to use their service?

Hi Robert

Welcome to nthw.co.uk :wavey:

It is a pain with the idle time disconnection but as long as you have outlook open all the time doing a send and recieve every 2 or 3 mins then you stay connected just fine.

Sometimes I even manage to stay online for more than the 2 hours but it is not often and there is no pattern to it.

I went 6 hours one time without being disconnected.

If you want to discuss this further then give me a shout.

I thought you couldn't purposely keep the connection alive? I'm sure you can't use a stay connect programme. But checking Email you would probably get away with.:)

Checking email you do get away with.

Geez - do people not read your posts :(

I have said this now how many times :confused:

Oh well :shrug:

when i was on dialup i used to set outlook to check emails every
5 mins and then drop outlook to the task bar :juggle: so if your cut off time is ten mins set to check emails every 8 mins worked for me

Hi Pete and thanks for the welcome.

The idle time doesn't give me too many problems; if I'm online I'm usually doing something so it's rarely idle.
It just seems like such a penny-pinching thing to burden people with.

AH Yes Well Mrs - thats ntl all over :rolleyes:

It isn't really a penny pinching move. It is a move to free up the the modem pools so that other users can dial-in and get connection on a contended service. If every dial-up user never disconnected the no-one else would be able to connect. Most dial-up ISP's have taken the view that if you are idle for 10-15 mins then you are no longer utilizing the connection which someone else could.

Yes, that's true I suppose :shrug:

If I remember right the cut-off for free ntl dialup was 4 minutes - one of the changes when they started charging was the increase to 15 minutes?

It takes me ages to type replies to messages - trying to do it on-line in less than 4 minutes was a real pain!:p

My last ISP before I went with NTL had a 10 min idle time.

There are many ways round this - the worst ones to use are the tools that keep alive by pinging, these are usually detected (or they were on the ISP I had).

Best do what others do - set your mail client to probe the mailservers every so often.

When I was on dial up, I downloaded the emails, drop the line, go through the emails and do all the replies (No time limit as your off line) dial up and send. Simple!

People still use 56k ? I was at a friend that still uses 56k cos he too far from ADSL exchange and no cable company nearby. It was ABSOLUTE TORTURE

Try some of the suggestions above ref popping your email every 8 minutes or so, it you're still having problems pm me and i'll have a look.

Try AOL, I know they are a little more expensive, but never seem to drop you, I've left my Nan's computer on-line all night while I was in bed and it was fine.