Re: "KeepAlive no" -- Will This Work For Me?

From: Yang Xiao (yxiao@fftw.com)
Date: 01/08/03 

From: yxiao@fftw.com (Yang Xiao)
Date: 8 Jan 2003 06:41:00 -0800

Al Cohen <amc79@nojunk.please.cornell.edu> wrote in message news:<kI2cnT5I57GoCIajXTWcpg@speakeasy.net>...
> We have an SSH tunnel running over some DSL lines that sometimes dies,
> which causes us great anguish and gnashing of teeth. Sometimes it is up
> for many days -- sometimes it dies a few times in a few hours. Because
> of the lack of consistancy, I assume that the connection is occasionally
> interrupted by *something*, and the connection says "OK, can't connect,
> might as well shut down".
>
> I did a little research tonight, and it looks to me that if I set
> "KeepAlive no" in the ssh_config and sshd_config of the respective
> machines, the tunnel should stay open even if there is an interruption
> -- the KeepAlive messages will not be sent, and thus neither side will
> know if the tunnel goes down.
>
> First question: Do I understand correctly?
>
> Second question: If this will, in fact, keep our tunnel open, are there
> any downsides to this? If one machine reboots, will it not be able to
> reestablish the tunnel?
>
> Thanks in advance for all wise answers!
>
> Al Cohen
> www.alcohen.com

Q1, yes, I think the KeepAlive directive should be properly renamed
"Kill Idle" or something like that, at least that's what the SSH book
from O'Reilly says.
Q2, No it won't.

Yang

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