Ensure that you have timeout's for your tcp session. Moving up to the jdbc level (java, ew) , mysql's jdbc driver had a problem on the low end box we were using, because it was taking greater than 30 seconds to get to the server and back. try'ing and catch'ing the tcp timeout exception helped on the client end... but you also need to make sure on the server end that the server shuts down inactive clients in a timely manor, or the server will think that there are a lot more open sessions then their actually is, taking up valuable server resources...