I need a program to send a keystroke during lengthy downloads to keep

I need a program to send a keystroke during lengthy downloads to keep my ISP connection from automatically terminating.
-Will

This question was answered on October 11, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Being disconnected right in the middle of a large download has been found to be one of the leading causes of “Cyber Road Rage” on the Information Super-highway Large downloads on a modem dial-up connection can sometimes take several hours and being cut-off right in the middle means you generally have to start all over again! The most common cause of this situation is the “auto-disconnect” system that most Internet Service Providers incorporate in order to free up phone lines All ISP’s have many more users then they have modems/phone lines, so they must do what they can to free up phone lines in order to keep the “busy signal” syndrome to a minimum Most incorporate a policy of disconnecting users that have shown a period of inactivity, ranging from 5 to 15 minutes The process of downloading a file from the Net should not be seen as “inactivity” but in some cases it is and this may be the cause of your problem Other possibilities include call waiting (which can be temporarily disconnected by placing a *70, in front of the number), noisy phone lines or even having too many items connected to the phone line In some cases, phone line splitters, fax machines, answering machines or any other device that is in the path of the modem can cause disconnect problems To check this, try eliminating everything between your computer and the wall plate by connecting your modem directly to the wall If none of the above scenarios applies to you, you can try opening your e-mail program and set it to check your mail every couple of minutes This setting can usually be found in the Tools, Preferences or Options menu depending upon your e-mail program If that does not work, then you may want to try an Internet connection keeper program such as “Rasputin” This class of software runs in the background of your system and simulates activity on a regular interval, which should help to keep your connection during the lengthy download times for large files Rasputin is a shareware program, which means you can try it, before you buy it The cost of the program is $10 and can be downloaded from

<a href="http://www.bastacomputing.com/ProdRasputin.htm"> http://www.bastacomputing.com/ProdRasputin.htm</a>

Another program that you may want to consider using is called “GetRight” GetRight extends the ability of your web browser's built-in downloading system by supporting graceful error recovery and download resuming among other advanced downloading features This means it may be able to pick up where it left off when you were disconnected so that you don’t have to start all over again You can download an evaluation version of GetRight at:

<a href="http://www.getright.com"> http://www.getright.com</a>

and buy it for $20 if you like it.