In reply to a post by yarwell:

you need to dig deeper and see if the ADSL is going off from router logs etc. Uptime figures are a start.

When I have had this loss of connection, the router log shows lots of bad packets transmitted. Also, the connection light will be hunting for several minutes and the status shows 'Authenticating' or even 'Dead'.

Does that sound like it is the line or my modem?

if the ADSL drops out it should show something along the lines handshaking .... training ... showtime with the DSL light flashing then going solid.

Authenticating sounds like a PPP session thing. This would affect the Internet light (if they're separate).

You should try a different router, just to rule it out. The Thompson routers have a problem with the ALG being removed in the firmware.

Also, given that some wiring issue was giving you a problem as well, that should be looked at again.

There are two lines to pursue,

a) If the ADSL is losing sync, PPPsession, etc.

b) If the VPN is dropping. Either a firewall somewhere is recycling idle connections, or the VPN's policy

On the latter, there is often the option to send keepalive packets once the tunnel has been established. I don't know much about the Cisco VPN, so you could speak to your network wallahs and see what is possible.

I would guess there are logs on the Cisco device, they would probably hint at the level the problem is at.