[ale] PPP Question?? 'renew' message?

[John Mills]

ALErs -

I need to periodically remind my PPP link that my system is still there
and I understand the way to do this may be issuing a "renew" packet, which
I've been told is very similar to a "request" packet, except that it
includes the link's current assigned IP instead of a place-holder used in
the "request" packet. The 'kick-out' interval seems to be about half an 
hour.

I don't know if this is achieved by specifying "keep-alive" for a
PPP link for some configuration programs, or something different.  
Different, I think, because link termination is not supposed to be
traffic-dependent for this environment, and in fact I get the kick-outs 
whether I'm sending traffic or not.

If that sounds incoherent, it just reflects my clueless state. Where can I
learn a bit more about PPP link management, and perhaps how to generate
these magic packets? My end of the link is being managed by a conventional
[AFAIK] ppp in a minimal 2.4 setup. What lives at the network end, I have
no idea.

TIA for any background.

 - Mills