sshd timeout

[Ron Gilbert]

I am trying to figure out how to keep a remote ssh session from being 
timed out by my FreeBSD (5.3) server.

I've done a lot of searching on the subject, and everyone points to 
ClientAliveInterval, ClientAliveCountMax and KeepAlive in sshd_config.  
  Problem is, these setting don't help since they seem to be about 
connections closing, not leaving a terminal session idle.

My problem is I've ssh'd in from my Mac to my FreeBSD server, and I 
need that ssh window to stay open forever.  Right now it closes after 
about 30 minutes of nothing being sent either way.

Sometimes I get a "Connection closed" error, and sometimes the Mac 
terminal window just hangs and I have to close it.  I have the same 
problem when shh'ing in from a Windows machine using Putty, except 
Putty has a option to send NUL chars every X minutes to keep the 
session alive, which works, but I would rather just keep the server 
from timing it out, and I don't use a Widows machine anymore.

Is there a way to fix this?

Ron