[ale] OT: BellSouth DSL keep-alive?

[Fulton Green]

I've noticed that whenever all I'm doing is SSH'ing to my remote mail host
from my BellSouth DSL'd box at home, the SSH session loses its connection
whenever there is no Internet activity on my box for more than 30 seconds.
So I'm guessing that the 30 seconds is the "Internet inactivity timeout" (or
something like that) on the BellSouth side.

I'm not losing the PPPoE connection; I can open up a Slashdot page with no
problems after losing the connection (up until whatever the PPPoE timeout
is).

And if I'm streaming MP3 or Ogg all the while, my SSH connection stays
connected, even if it's five mins. between keystrokes.  So I'm concluding
that the timeout isn't on a per-connection basis.

Though I forgot to try it before I left for work, I think that setting
up a "ping -i 25 somehost.bellsouth.net" can suffice for keeping my SSH
connection up (unless the timeout is strictly predicated on TCP/IP
activity).

Any other ideas?

TIA
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