System and method for maintaining a network connection

摘要

A system and method for maintaining a persistent connection is provided. In an embodiment, a system includes a client that connects to a web-server via physical link that is bandwidth-constrained. The physical link also includes at least one network address translation ("NAT") router that is configured to terminate idle connections between the client and the web-server. The client is configured to send keep-alive packets to the web-server in order to reduce the likelihood of the NAT router terminating the connection. The keep-alive packets are sent on a variable basis that is intended to reduce bandwidth consumption while ensuring that the NAT router does not deem the connection idle and terminate the connection. <IMAGE>