My terminal keeps timing out, how can I prevent this?

If you are connected to one of the cloud servers and your terminal session ends after a period of non-use (about 5 minutes or so), you may receive a message: Write Failed: broken pipe.

An error like this could occur if you leave your computer for a few minutes then return to continue working, causing the server to not receive the "KeepAlive" message from your terminal session.

macOS/Linux Terminals

One way to remedy this is to update your ~/etc/ssh/ssh_config file to include: 

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 120

If you do not want to modify your ssh_config file, you can append your ssh command like so:

ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=120 user@ip.address

Windows Users

 For PuTTY users, you're able to set the "KeepAlive" message like so:

1. Open PuTTY
2. Type your hostname or IP address in the field provided
3. On the left side of the screen, select Connection from the list of configuration options
4. Set the number of seconds between keepalives to 10