After you have logged in, the gateway will pass traffic originated by your host to and from the rest of the Internet. Also, your browser will begin periodic page refreshes for the heartbeat. Feel free to resize, move, windowshade, lower, iconify minimize or hide the heartbeat window if it gets in your way, just so long as you leave it alive.
Closing the heartbeat window or using it to visit a non-heartbeat URL will log you off.
If you log off from the heartbeat system, you will be unable to open new connections to other systems (such as for shell logins, checking email, and so forth). However, your existing connections will stick around to avoid browser problems disrupting your ongoing work. If your existing connections remain live, but you cannot open new connections, go to your heartbeat window and redo your login.