killing NAT timeouts, for fun and profit Options

[Guest_eltee_*]

Given a number of users are stuck behind annoying timeout prone routers these days (and unfortunately that the number of us are growing not shrinking) it would be nice to have a 'world' option to kill NAT timeouts.

This is pretty easily done by jus sending an empty packet to the connected world every x minutes. The packet, being empty, is discarded, but after it fools the NAT device into realizing the connection is still live.

A bonus (over using ##task) is that there is no indication its happened at all within the actual mu*. If you are idle 10 minutes and an empty packet is bounced, you are still idle 10 minutes. This helps by not leaving connections open indefinately (the mu* timeout will still apply) and lets people know when you are infact, idle.

Once something like this is in place, those of us with these routers will *NEVER* suffer another NAT timeout again. Not bad, ending months or nigh on years of frustration for lots of people with a single little quick change. ^.^

[jay]

Good suggestion. I'll look at adding support for this.