RDP/VPN issues, connection dropping on inactivity

Soldato
Joined
14 Mar 2011
Posts
5,443
Hey all,

Trying to troubleshoot a problem but struggling to work out where to go with it at this point... background:

My better half works from home a few days a week... she accesses her machine at work using RDP after connecting to her work's VPN. It's been working absolutely fine for ages. Then a few weeks ago we got sent a new router and since then she is seeing frequent disconnects after any short period of inactivity (e.g. getting up to make a quick cup of tea and returning, so not long). The IT department claim nothing has changed at their end, and all idle-timeout etc. type settings are set fairly permissively (~8 hours). I have been through every settings and advanced-settings page on the router but can't see anything that seems relevant. Router is a Technicolor (I can get the model number later)

So I'm not really expecting a direct solution, more like advice on what tools/techniques I can try to use to get more information about what's happening? I've tried looking in Windows' event log and having her make a note of the times of any disconnects, but there's nothing in any logs I can see that look out of the ordinary... Likewise the Router logs don't show anything obvious either

She says when in use the VPN works perfectly and she has never been disconnected whilst actually working; only when briefly leaving the machine to go to the loo, make a drink, etc.

All suggestions welcome - would be great to get to the bottom of this one!
 
Update! Possible major clue here...

We've noticed that you can seemingly prevent the VPN connection from dropping by having another device on the network provide some constant activity on the network, e.g. If we either use a smartphone, or boot up my PC and set a Youtube playlist constantly playing videos, the connection is absolutely rock solid even once the machine has been left idle for hours...

It sort of feels like some kind of power saving feature (in the router?) which kicks in when network activity drops to very low levels (i.e. when it's purely the RDP connection sending the occasional keep-alive packet)... by providing a constant bandwith drain elsewhere on the network it doesn't end up killing the VPN connection... Or it's just a coincidence? I'll have another dig in the router settings tonight but focusing on power saving rather than VPN related stuff (which is what I was looking out for previously)... anyone got any ideas based on this?
 
It's a "MediaAccess TG589vac v2"

I've just done another full pass through all of the Router settings and nothing stands out to me as being related to any kind of idle timeout... But it could just be called something I don't recognise
 
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