disconnects from chat server

I've noticed that when I login from internet, eg, from my office, once the connection is established, sometimes it appears to self disconnect, I notice this if I'm idle for sometime and then try to chat that I've disconnected from server. what's the explanation for the disconnect, and curious, if the data/text transmitted is itself encrypted, or is it that the login is password protected so that no one could join the chat, and if no one can join would it matter if the text itself is not encrypted ??

 

Some hardware routers can be a little deceiving when it comes to programs like CryptoSuite. Are you using the latest version of CS? The latest version has a relatively constant "PING" it does to the server as a keep alive, this ensures (though not 100%) the connection stays "active" and isn't dropped by the OS or routers.

Everything in the chat is encrypted, and if you use a password then even man in the middle attacks are thwarted. Though even without a password you are still relatively safe, unless someone is eavesdropping your connection and changing packets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_middle_attack

 

my version of CS is 1.100. if I wasn't clear, I setup the chat server on my home pc, currently thru a netgear NAT (with some prelim issues getting netgear config correctly). so then when I get to my office, I connect to the (home) chat server with a password. this morning, it appeared that I stayed connected for about 4 hours, although I was sending a short msg from office every 20 or 30 mins. in past, it seemed that if office CS was not used for say more than 30 mins, then I'd see a disconnect, or more precisely, it would look like I was connected, then I send and I get a msg that user (office_me) was disconnected, but if I tried to reconnect with same user name I got msg that I could not use that name because it was alreay connected. so then I would reconnect with a new user name and I'd be ok until the next disconnect. I would say could be isolated to my office network, novell, and not controlled by me, but I also tried connected from another IP on a different pc and also so disconnects there too. so not sure what the problem is, but this morning I stay connected from office, so I continue to monitor and see if I can figure it out. I'll try running packet analyzer. this issue aside (or even with this issue), I really like CS !!