My elderly mother keeps forgetting to disconnect from the internet so her phone line is busy for hours. It is not worth changing to broadband as her usage is very low. Following one of the answers on your website, I tried to set her PC to disconnect if idle for 20 minutes by ticking the appropriate box in the Internet Options control panel > “Connections” tab > Advanced. However, this does not disconnect the connection after 20 minutes of inactivity. I also ticked the box “Disconnect when connection is no longer needed” but without success. The computer is running Windows XP.

I imagine the reason that the internet is not disconnecting is because even though the internet connection appears to be idle, as your mother is not actively doing something on the computer such as checking email or browsing the web, there is still something accessing the internet in the background. This is not surprising, since most applications developed in recent times assume that the user has broadband internet access (given how widespread broadband adoption has been within the last few years). As such, since something in the background is still accessing the internet the connection remains active. There is no easy way around this issue, as the processes which are accessing the internet are likely to be hidden and running in the Windows background.

However, I have found a free utility called DialupMon (www.skynergy.com/dialupmon.html) which seems to meet your needs perfectly. Using this utility you can set an auto disconnect time at which point the window will appear asking whether you wish to disconnect the internet or cancel. For example, the default setting is 10 minutes. After being connected to the internet for 10 minutes a window will appear asking whether you wish to remain connected. If you click the “Cancel” button you will remain connected, but if you do nothing (i.e. you are not sitting in front of the computer) the connection will disconnect. I strongly recommend that you read the online documentation (www.skynergy.com/dialupmon/help/index.html) to ensure you setup DialupMon correctly. Additionally, you must use DialupMon to establish your internet connection. It calls the Windows dial-up connection you have already configured, so there is no need to configure your connection within DialupMon as well, but you need to establish the connection through the DialupMon program (using the “Connect” button) rather than establishing the connection directly using the Windows dial-up connection. If you don’t do this DialupMon will not know you are connected and cannot monitor the time you have been connected to the internet!