[beagle3]

One should set both ServerAliveInterval and ClientAliveInterval settings on ssh to a reasonably small time (e.g. 1 min or 5 min). Note that there's another setting {Server,Client}AliveCountMax which multiplies this to find the actual "connection is dead" determination time.

The tradeoff is between a network disconnect-reconnect killing your connection when it shouldn't (because you've noticed the disconnect but you wouldn't if you didn't send heartbeats), and discovering the network disconnect or dead peer (which you wouldn't if you didn't send anything, thinking it's still there).

Personally, I prefer to know the connection is dead sooner than later even if it comes back on its own.