Keeping an SSH connection alive

Do you get disconnected from your SSH session often? I do... but I've found a solution that helps.

An SSH configuration that can be made on the server or client side but in my instance it makes more sense for the update to be on the client side.

In your ~/.ssh/config we'll utilize the ServerAliveInterval declaration.

ServerAliveInterval
             Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has
             been received from the server, ssh(1) will send a message through
             the encrypted channel to request a response from the server.  The
             default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to
             the server.  This option applies to protocol version 2 only.

This declaration informs the client to send a keep alive packet at a certain interval to the server, ensuring the connection stays open.

Host example
  Hostname example.com
  ServerAliveInterval 30

That declaration will send a packet every 30 seconds if the connection goes idle. Now this is the desired funcationality that I'd like to see for all of my SSH connections so we can add it to the host wildcard like so:

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 120

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