Samba Disconnecting from NT Share

I use the smbmount command to mount an NT share (a different server) to my Linux box. The share stays open for a while, then disconnects. After it drops off, if I try and do an ls command to see the shared directory on the Linux box, I get an Input/output error. I can do an smbmount command again to remount. Is there any way to keep the connection open permanently? I am using the share to connect via my Apache web server so it is important that it stays connected all the time.

Please help…
I am using the latest version of Samba on Red Hat 6.2