Question & Answer
Question
Rational Developer for i (RDI) can be used to edit source members on the IBM i. If I leave RDI connected when I go for lunch or take a long time editing or whatever when I return and try to interact with the IBM i (such as trying to save an open source member) I may see a disturbing message about my connection being lost. How can I prevent this?
Answer
Typically this happens due to the underlying RSE connection being idle longer than the idle time-out on the network. Experience shows that when this is an issue a time-out of 20 or 30 minutes is typically being imposed by network devices (bridges, routers, etc.). On the IBM i the default keep alive poll is 120 minutes. The solution is to modify the IBM i keep alive poll to be about 5 minutes less than the time-out set by the network devices. You can ask your IT department what it is. If that is not possible (or they don't know) then go with setting the IBM i keep alive poll interval to 15 minutes and you should have no further dropped connection issues with RSE.
To set the keep alive timer to 15 minutes on the IBM i issue the command CHGTCPA TCPKEEPALV(15)
Was this topic helpful?
Document Information
Modified date:
17 February 2026
UID
dwa1288843