This might be a small thing but GREAT to know.  It was annoying me for quite some time and today I needed to transfer a large file from a remote machine I was connected to via ssh, I’d then FTP my file to another host (ftp myhost.com, then “put myfile.extension”) which was going to take quite some time to do.  Every time my ssh session timed out I’d have to start the transfer again (although this only happened once on this occasion since I knew it would probably happen and I’d finally have to tackle the annoying problem) and who wants to keep beating their head into the wall? – UGH!

It turns out the setting is on the client side not the server side (I thought it might be on the server side).  For those of you using Putty from Windows like I was you need to:

  1. Start Putty
  2. “Load” your connection settings if you have them saved
  3. Click on “Connection”
  4. On the section that says “Sending of null packets to keep session active”, I changed mine to

Here’s a pic for the settings:
Putty Session Timeout Settings

Although this tip is for a Linux client (found here –> Link); from February of 2006 it’s still pertinent today and what tipped me off to where I might find my problem in my Windows client :)