Connection Keeper

If for whatever reason you are still a dial-up user, Connection Keeper might be a very interesting tool for you.

It simulates Internet browsing – even when you are not using your PC – to avoid being disconnected by your ISP because of inactivity. Besides, the program can perform some extra tasks, like closing automatically those annoying pop-up windows that ask if you want to stay connected.

Even though the program offers a rudimentary and little attractive interface – which resembles the 80's –, it happens to be very self-explanatory as it displays balloon tips for each configurable parameter as soon as you hover your mouse over it. You can enable or disable browsing simulation with a simple click, set the keep-alive duration in hours, and select the dial-up connection to be used to reconnect to the Internet, in case your PC is disconnected nonetheless. Moreover, you can set the query interval to 2, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, or leave it as random.

Connection Keeper allows you to create a list of URLs to be used to simulate Internet browsing. You can configure the program to query those URLs in order, randomly, or to use non-existent URLs. Moreover, you can see your connection's current status and a complete set of SNMP statistics in a separate tab. Finally, you can select among several methods of closing the pop-up windows mentioned above. You can identify them by their caption, their class, or the text of their buttons, and emulate some keystrokes to close them.

In short, Connection Keeper is a simple yet powerful application that allows you to keep your dial-up connection on and to reconnect to it automatically in case that fails. Besides, you can configure all the relevant parameters to achieve this.