No doubt I am going to feel really dumb when someone points out what a trivial problem this is to fix... but go ahead, I can take it!

My home computer is connected to the internet through a dial-up connection. This connection stays "up" for about five minutes and then disconnects if I do not actively use the connection to send or receive data. Because I read the bbs by opening up multiple windows (one for each thread, as many as 50 windows at once) I spend long periods of time just processing those windows without using the dial-up connection. Also, sometimes I will spend quite a bit of time attempting to craft a semi-intelligent post to place on the bbs. I fully expect to lose my connection before I finish writing this one.

I am running Windows 98se, and Netscape 4.78, although I don't think the Netscape has anything to do with it.

In control panel/internet options/connections/settings/advanced, I have tried different values for the "Disconnect if idle for..." box, and none of them correspond with when it actually disconnects. So I unchecked that option so it shouldn't disconnect at all, now. I unchecked the box for "Disconnect when connection may no longer be needed" and that had no effect. The latest thing I tried (and this may have worked but I don't know because I just now accidentally opened a new netscape window and thus reset the "countdown to disconnect" timer) was to tell Netscape to check my mail every four minutes instead of the previous eight minutes, four minutes being less than the time the connection would stay active before.

Do I have something strange going on here, or am I just too stupid to figure out how to do it right?

tanstaafl.