Hitting web site consistently dropped ppp connection?

[siemers@bms.com (Nathan O. Siemers)]

I've got a weird one, folks.

I've got a debian slink box serving as router for a network connected
to the internet by a dialup ppp connection.  It does some masquerading
for the other systems on the local network, which include another
slinkbox and a redhat 5.2 system.


Yesterday, following the link:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/03/20/1158230&pid=0#35 ,

reading with netscape 4.07 on the redhat 5.2 system,
                                                                               
killed my ppp connection to the internet from my slink router.

This happened reproducibly (5 times) when I hit that particular page
(not a couple other pages at slashdot), at around 64K of download.  I
sent lots of other test stuff over the ppp connection with no
problems.
                                                                               
Is there a ghost in the machine?  How could that happen? Is this a
freak coincidence or the tickling/exploit of a pppd bug?  It there an
escape sequence embedded in the transfer that could reset the modem?
Perhaps I am just a victim of a freak coincidence.

Thanks for any ideas,

	nathan



-- 
Nathan O. Siemers - Transcriptional Profiling, Bioinformatics -
Division of Applied Genomics - Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical
Research Institute - Hopewell Building 3B - P.O. Box 5400, Princeton,
NJ 08543-5400 - 609 818-6568 - siemers@bms.com