251532 - Hook into Win32 dialup API to do timeout/auto-disconnect as needed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Brian Sweeney]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
Build Identifier: 

if you are using a dial up connection and have the preference "disconnect if 
idle for xx minutes" set in your connection properties, once mozilla has 
dialled up and been connected for xx minutes a dialogue box appears 
saying "connection has been idle for xx minutes. windows will disconnect in 60 
seconds". this is due to windows not detecting connection traffic from firefox.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.set disconnect if idle parameter on your dial up internet connection for xx 
minutes
2.use internet for xx minutes
3.auto-disconnect dialog box will automatically appear

Actual Results:  
dialogue box saying connection has been idle for xx minutes and will disconnect 
in 60 seconds appears

Expected Results:  
detected active internet connection and not asked to disconnect

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I don't have dialup, so I can't test this, but how would Windows not detect
traffic that is going through its networking API?

Comment 2

[Johannes Rohr]

Same on windows 2000. 

Actually this seems like a Windows bug to me, as it also occurs with a number of
other apps. The only solution would be to make firefox, thunderbird and others
to use Windows' dialup functions from WININET.DLL to initiate and terminate the
connection, just as Iexplore and Outlook Express do.

Pegasus Mail does this (on request) and it works well.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

*** Bug 259541 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

*** Bug 259541 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I think there is probably a documented way to make this work.  If not, we could
always use the disconnect API and an internal timer, but that's ugly...

I doubt this will make 1.0 unless a patch pops up, but its definitely something
we would want for 1.5

Need to ping appropriate people wrt where this needs to go.

Comment 6

[OstGote!]

*** Bug 283560 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[supporter]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I think there is probably a documented way to make this work.  
> If not, we couldalways use the disconnect API and an internal
> timer, but that's ugly...

Yes that's a bit ugly. But I looked for a way to detect such inactivity of a internet connection. The only way I could find was the windows connection statistics (API function), which delivers the total bytes that have been transferred. To detect if the connection is inactive for xx minutes you only have the possibility to set a timer and periodically check if some bytes were sent/received. I implemented this in a Win32 EXE to hang up the dialup-connection after sending/receiving mails in Thunderbird. The connection will be hung up if no bytes were transferred, otherwise there is the possiblity to show a message box that asks the user to hang up anyway...

I think this is the only way. You have to test the connection periodically as other apps such as external download managers or media players or whatelse might use the connection. But to implement something like that is no problem and as I told I already did this. It's maybe something you could use!?!?

Comment 8

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

hope to actually remove dialer

Comment 9

[Johannes Rohr]

Oh well, that's a method of fixing bugs. Just wait a decade and the bug will become obsolete by itself