Is it possible to keep a dial-up connection longer than 12 hours, or do I need to accept this as one of the unchangeable "Facts of Life"?

After assuring me that there are no Earthlink session or IP-address-lease limits, three tech-support people have offered various unsuccessful solutions. Another told me basically to "deal with it", and a fifth told me honestly (much to his credit) that he didn't know.

All of which is an unneeded reminder that inconsistent and ineffective tech-support advice is an unchangeable "Fact of Life".

Yes.

I recall having at least one dial-up session that ran 15 hours.

Your ISP or telephone provider might have a policy discouraging that, however.

As I noted above, most Earthlink tech-support people insist there are no limits. According to one long-time employee, Verizon doesn't have any either.

So far, most of the ineffective advice that has been "guaranteed to work" has involved changing the modem init string. Any suggestions how I can point tech support in the right direction to avoid wasting any more time?

This is going back a few years, but I can only remember having this problem twice.

Once was when I was using software from my first dial-up ISP. It seemes that there was a program included with that software that would automatically disconnect after so many hours connected and after so many idle minutes. Removing that program solved the problem.

The other instance was when I was using W98SE which had the notorious memory leak. My computer would basically peter out after 15 or so hours and so would the connection. Upgrading the operating system seemed to have solved that problem.

Since I don't use W98SE, and Earthlink tech support is living in a state of denial, I'll just have to wait and hope for somebody else's input. Thanks anyway, k027.