Wally Wombat said:
Hi
I have xp pro with all the service upgrades. I use Defender, and windows
firewall.
I notice my broadband connection keeps dropping out and with the
message "work offline or try again" popping up.
Give more details about your connection.
E.g. is the underlying protocol PPPoE? Where is the login initiated?
E.g. by the OS or by a component of your modem?
I feel there must be a tick in a box somewhere that tells the system
to disconnect after when not being used,
Have you asked your ISP?
First of all note that this is exactly analogous to what a dial-up user
who has specified Never dial may see. The OS and its applications
then rely on the user making a manual dial-up connection before they
can use the Internet. After this is done they may regard the Internet
connection as being provided by a LAN.
This happened to me quite frequently until I decided to treat the PPPoE
connection exactly the same way that I had treated my old dial-up
connection. E.g. the OS is aware of it, so I'm not reliant on the modem
keeping it up or more particularly, getting it going again when the OS
comes along with a request, supposedly directed to a LAN, that it can't
immediately support. It seems to be delays like that which cause the OS
to think that there is no connection to the Internet.
Consequently I have my mail clients, OE and WLMail aware that there is
a PPPoE connection, and then they do the necessary setup. If I forget
to check mail before using the browser this message lets me know that.
So, while it is up I can just switch to OE and press Ctrl-M, then switch
back to the message and click on Retry--exactly the same way that I
had to do it with dial-up.
Another alternative, while the message is up, is to use the Connection To
menu in the Start menu (e.g. press Ctrl-Esc,T) and then pick my DSL
connection. Either way seems to make the OS and its applications more
aware that the real connection to the Internet is *not* via a LAN so then
perhaps they are more tolerant of any periodic delays caused by the PPPoE.
HTH
Robert Aldwinckle
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