FTP connections are constantly getting dropped & blocked

[#1]

I'm a web designer who occasionally works from a home office on a Plusnet Broadband account, using the Plusnet One router.

I'm using various FTP clients to connect to remote servers to update website files. I have dozens of site connections set up in these FTP clients, across various servers. The issue I am having is that one minute I can connect to a remote location with no issues. 5 Minutes later the connection is dropped & I can then no longer connect to the remote location. This blocking does not affect various account on the same server, as I can seem to connect to one site & at the exact same moment not connect to another site on the same shared hosting account.

The basic error messages I am getting are saying that the FTP client cannot retrieve the contents of /public_html/ which is the root remote location set up for each connection.

This must be connected to my new Plusnet broadband service, as I have just recently moved and this never happened at my home office at our old location, which was still with Plusnet. I also don't get this issue at all when working from various offices.

I'm connected via plain FTP, port 21 with passive FTP, which it what I have use for years and years with no issues. As I say, it DOES work, it's just that it is constantly getting dropped & will then not connect 5 minutes later.

If I check any of these connections for a site in cPanel, where I can check FTP connections, it does show the connection in there, even if the FTP client says it cannot connect.

I hope someone can help!

Cheerio

Mat

[#2]

Just bumping this one. Can anyone offer any thoughts? What is the best way to get Plusnet to help with this? When i went through initial support, they just said "there's no fault on your line, sorry." Wonderful...

[#3]

I dimly remember NAT routers doing clever things with FTP connections, even when in PASV mode, because there are two open TCP connections: control and data. My guess is the Plusnet router is timing out the control connection, but the server doesn't know that and is limiting the number of connections you can open.

A few thoughts:

1. Does your FTP client include a "keep alive" option? If so, try setting it. If not, try an alternative client that does.
2. Are there settings to adjust FTP cleverness? I'm not familiar with this router's config, so can't help finding it.
3. Try temporarily putting your client in the DMZ. If that fixes it, this points to a router config issue.
4. Try your old router (reconfigured for your Plusnet connection, natch.)

[#4]

Great stuff, thanks very much for the input. I like to work with Transmit, by Panic, which is a great Mac FTP client. After a little Googling, in Transmit there is an option to add a specific server to a preferences list, with the options to apply extra setting to connections to that server. One of those is the option to 'Tickle' the server, which looks like it is their 'Keep Alive' setting. I've set that up for the main servers I work with, and so far all connections are active & staying so. It's only been 10 minutes though, but hopefully that is exatly what I was after!

Thank again for the guidance, much appreciated.

[#5]

Awesome. HTH. Do come back and let us know if it's fixed the problem, once you're sure