Is there a way to maintain an ftp connection without being cut off?

I suppose that was redundant....

I have an application that needs to update to a web server quite often, but, apparently not often enough to maintain the connection.


I either need a way to see if I am still logged on and only then try to log back on, or and more greatly useful would be some way of maintaing it.


It takes to long to login everytime i need to ftp something.
that it would make this application too slow.

:-)


Thanks guys and gals,

Nick