I have an unreliable connection between my server and the rest of the
world.
Yes, I'm going to have to deal with that; it's not what I'm asking about.

I have a reliable wired connection from my laptop to my server.
And I run mutt on my server, connecting to it by ssh.

What puzzles me is that every now and then, communication from my laptop to
mutt mysteriously pauses. After a while, it resumes.

Using a separate ssh connection to root on the server (which I use to
monitor my unreliable connectino to the rest of the world), I've noticed:

That separate ssh connection stays up when mutt blocks. But using
ifconfig on that separate ssh connection tells me that pppoe connection to
the rest of the world is off when mutt blocks.

Why does mutt block, not even letting me type into the editor for an email
I plan to send, when the ppp connection is down? What does mutt have to do
with an internet connection? Isn't that postfix/s job?

-- hendrik