process won't stop by a remote timeout

[Remco]

Hello

When i have a remote connection (ea tail -f ...)  and the connection is lost
becoase of a timeout the process keeps on running.
It looks like that the server doesn't recognise that the other side is
disconnected.
both tail and bash keeps running.
If i look with netstat the server says that the connection is established.

tcp        0      0 xxxx.nl:ssh          yyyyyy.nl:63495 ESTABLISHED

This happens with ydl 2.2 and 2.3, I use ssh but it also happens with
netatalk


Can anyone tell me what process is responsible for the cleaning of the
connection.
Is there a possibility to change the time the service checkes for "dead"
connections.
or is there a way that i can check for a dead connection so a script can
kill them.

Grtz,Remco