Stopping my internet connection from going idle?

Factual Questions
1

I’m connected to my Uni halls network, and I’m supposedly receiving a ‘Broadband’ connection. I’m really not, but there’s nothing I can do about it aside from repeatedly writing complaints letters and looking forwards to when I’m in private accomodation and can have my own connection.

Recently they’ve added an authentication feature, which means that if your connection goes idle for a period of time (this time period, they wont tell me), then you have to sign in. This sign in screen comes up when you try to access any webpage. So if you’re trying to use the internet from anything other than IE then it just tells you that there’s no connection.

This obviously becomes very annoying during downloads. I’m using various p2p software (but I’m not here to discuss/argue/promote their legality or morality), and there are times when a certain dowload will run out of sources and my connection will go idle. If I’m kicked off the network by then, I’m not always around to sign back in. I can go away for a day and expect six files to have downloaded by the time I get home, only to find that my computer hasn’t been doing anything since fifteen minutes after I left my room.

So…after a lengthy intro, my question is; is there any software (preferably free) that I can download to enable my connection to stay active all the time, without using up too much bandwidth?

It seems to me like there must be.

Mods; although I mention the problem this causes with p2p software, it happens with most programs that require the internet and with most downloads, so please dont close this on behalf of that!

2

It would be incredibly simple to write a script to ping an arbitrary computer, and have it repeat every 5 minutes or so. Windoze has a script scheduler.

3

Yeah that would probably work I guess. Just open up notepad enter in “ping www.google.com” ans save it as ping.bat
Then have Windows run this every 5 minutes.

4

Make that “ping www.google.com>null:” so you don’t have to close the output windows.

5

I’ve used similar connections at Hotels, requiring the login to a web page before the connection works, and the ping solution would not work on those systems. The way they had it set up, your connection was valid for 24 hrs. So even if you were using the network constantly 24 hrs later, it would suddenly stop working and you’d have to sign in again.

Just saying, even if you keep the connection alive, your login may timeout after a day anyway.

6

Thank you all for your speedy responses!

I get how to write the bat file, but how do I get windows to run it every 5 minutes? Is that in scheduled tasks via control panel?

7

OK, i’ve made a .bat file with “ping www.google.com>null:” in it, and set it to execute every five minutes.

The command line windows aren’t closing each time, though. Have I put the wrong text in the file?

8

Make the next line in the .bat “exit”

9

OK, I should have been able to figure that out myself. :wally

Been working solely with windows, and haven’t used MS-dos for a while!

Thank you all, hope this works!