DBCP tracking stale connections?

[Martin van Dijken]

Hey gang,
 
I know I should ask this question on users, but bear with me a second. Does DBCP track 
and terminate connections which have been idle so long that they are killed by the 
DBMS?
 
The reason I ask, is that after 8 hours of inactivity on a website(and thus 
DBconnections) mysql considers connections to be lost and kills them. After that the 
website fails to work. All connections throw IOExceptions telling me that no 
connection could be established.
 
Love to hear from ya,
 
Martin van Dijken