Remote Desktop keeps disconnecting

I can connect to my home PC easily, but after a certain amount of time I will loose connection.

I can re-connect no problem but the problem gradually gets worse until I restart the host machine. Then it's usually fine for another hour or so.

This happens on both machines on my home network.

Nothing else on my network uses the port I use for remote desktop. (each machine uses a different public port)

both host machines run XP Pro.

 

So if I have this straight your doing port translation in the router?

Example would be a request from 3390 on the wan side gets forwarded to 3389 @ 192.168.1.100

Is this assumption correct?

What kind of internet connection?

Sounds like the internet connection is intermentent.

Could anyone else in the house be attempting to use the desktop?

 

yes

ADSL

(ISP is Telus)

Is there a test I can do to verify this? I haven't noticed this in any other service

I run a web server on a third machine, and it is always up (although HTTP connections usually just last a second or two unlike Remote Desktop which is persistant so it's probably not a fair comparason)

No, The machines are in a locked office. and I get no message like "you have been disconnected "

 

Yes
From inside your lan.

ping xx.xxx.xx.xxx -n 1000 -l 1000

That will send 1000 byte packets 1000 times.
-n is the count -l is the size

 

I pinged google.ca and here are the results...

ping google.ca -n 1000 -l 1000

 

i ran the test again and got the same results

Ping statistics for 216.239.39.104:
Packets: Sent = 1000, Received = 998, Lost = 2 (0
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 76ms, Maximum = 127ms, Average = 80ms

 

Nothing wrong with that.
That was the only idea I had.

 

something worth mentioning,

this occoures more often when I do alot of ftp transfers on the host machine (though that's on a completely different port)

 

Try Changing the MTU size on the LAN router your are connecting. By default it may be 1500. 1432 should fix the problem. Hope that helps. Good luck!