linux connection dying?

[Hart Larry]

Well, I had a similar problem where especially if I were running file sharing 
programs, my connection would drop, I had to power-cycle the modem.  What we 
found was a setting in the high-speed modem where keep alive was set to 10 
minutes, so we changed it to 999, now I have no issues like this--and I've run 
mutella-and-17 bittorrent sessions along with an ssh.
Hart