Basically this is a security feature. Ssh connection freezes or drops out after N minutes of inactivity. According to official OpenSSH man page:

“This is usually the result of a packet filter or NAT device timing out your TCP connection due to inactivity. For security, reason most enterprises only use SSH protocol version 2. This problem only occurred with version 2.”

If you work for long hours using ssh and left workstation for some other work, your connection will be dropped by remote server. This may be little annoying to you. So to get rid of this problem:

The GNU version of the tar archiving utility (and other old version of tar) can be use through network over ssh session. Do not use telnet command, it is insecure. You can use Unix/Linux pipes to create actives. Following command backups /wwwdata directory to dumpserver.nixcraft.in (IP 192.168.1.201) host over ssh session.

# tar zcvf - /wwwdata | ssh root@dumpserver.nixcraft.in "cat > /backup/wwwdata.tar.gz"

or

# tar zcvf - /wwwdata | ssh root@192.168.1.201 "cat /backup/wwwdata.tar.gz"

Output:
[code]
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

A little bird was flying south for the Winter. It was so cold the bird
froze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there,
a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.
As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize
how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all
warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.
A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the
sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly
dug him out and ate him.

[b]Morals of the story:

A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the
top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."
"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull.
They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough
strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating
some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night,
the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree.

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch
when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out.
The Genie says, "I'll give each of you just one wish."
"Me first! Me first!" says the admin clerk. "I want to be in the Bahamas,
driving a speedboat, without a care in the world."
Puff! She's gone.
"Me next! Me next!" says the sales rep. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing
on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas
and the love of my life."
Puff! He's gone.
"OK, you're up," the Genie says to the manager.

So you are ready to get a your own hosting, not an free hosting but your own hosting which need your effort to be managed ? Or you think you are atleast! This little test will help you determine if you have enough understandings in the way of running a linux hosting.

SIM is a system and services monitor for ‘SysVinit’ systems. It is designed to be intuitive and modular in nature, and to provide a clean and informative status system.

It does this by consistently verifying that services are online, load averages are in check, and log files are at reasonable sizes. Many other SIM modules sport different and in-depth features to bring a well rounded tool to your disposal to stop otherwise common issues daunting internet hosts.

This is simple method for installing SIM On linux server.

Login to your server via SSH as root

If hard disk of your computer or server is taking too much time to get the result, then to improve your hard disk speed you will need to configure a special buffer in the computer’s memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk. This tip is only recommended if your computer or server has 256MB RAM or higher.

Step 1:

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Step 2:

Expand the system.ini file window.

Step 3:

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Step 4:

"Mod_bandwidth" (mod bandwidth) is a module for the Apache webserver that enable the setting of server-wide or per connection bandwidth limits, based on the directory, size of files and remote IP/domain.

For Apache 1.3x. ONLY! This how-to is not compatible with old versions of apache, including but not limited to 1.3beta

How to install mod_bandwidth

1. Login to your server via SSH as root.

2. Type: mkdir /root/mod_bw

3. Type: cd /root/mod_bw

4. Type: wget ftp://ftp.cohprog.com/pub/apache/module/1.3.0/mod_bandwidth.c

There's a lot of utility to monitor and restart daemon when service is failed.

Monit
Nagios
Argus
Hobbitmon
Cacti

They're all great tools, but what's more important is to spend the time to learn them, and adapt them to your environment.