To ensure the connection exists, the client can periodically ping the server. The server will respond with an I'm alive message if the connection is still up. Be aware that setting the timeout to drastically low values can significantly increase your network traffic. To disable the feature altogether, set it to 0 seconds.
Examples:
In a web page:
<param name="pingtimeout" value="100">
In a param file:
pingtimeout=100