If you use WinSCP as your secure copy/FTP client you may get this error: "Network error: Software caused connection abort". This is really annoying since it then requires you to connect anew and it takes time to get your session back to its previous state. This error comes about because most FTP clients (the machine you connect to), will close a connection if there is no activity over a certain time period, usually five minutes.

If you want to stop getting the "Network error: Software caused connection abort" message, you can configure WinSCP so that it sends a message to the client on a regular basis so that it appears there is continuous activity, the results in the connection being kept alive. To configure WinSCP to do this, you need to modify your connection settings on the WinSCP login screen. From the tree menu on the left, select the "Connection" option. On the right hand side of the screen, select the "Executing dummy protocol commands" radio button in the "Keepalives" section. Once you do this, WinSCP will communicate with the client at the interval specified in the "Seconds between keepalives" (the default is 30 seconds, which should be fine for most clients) and this will keep your WinSCP connection alive.