What is Idle Timeout?
Some Routers’ Internet connection types like BigPond Cable have an idle timeout setting. This is supposed to instruct the Router to disconnect from the Internet if no one has used it after a certain amount of time and then reconnect automatically as soon as someone tries to access something again. Personally I can’t see the point and this feature has caused so many problems for so many people I’d prefer to see it ommitted completely in favour of an “always on” connection. After all, we’re not charged by time on Broadband so what’s it for? Furthermore, this feature can cause some truly evil behaviour on some Routers. With Netgears for example, we used to be instructed to set the idle timeout to “0” for an “always on” connection, but now with many models, setting this to “0” causes the Router to constantly connect and disconnect in under a second. (Aargh!). Even worse is that these same models still instruct to set Idle Timout to “0” for an always on connection in the help files. Linksys
