[arm-allstar] Stability question. Is there any difference between connecting to a public node vs a "permalink" connection?

[kd4ont]

I've been seeing behaviour that looks like someone is playing "whack a mole" with either allmon2 or supermon. The repeater owner says nobody is playing this game and suggests to add a permalink to my stanza. The link and ip is a private node. 
Others, which are in my circle of learning newbs, are getting boots that are so random that the connection could last for 5 seconds, 5 minutes,  5 hours, or 5 days. It is like someone, on the other side, pulled the plug,  and everything goes dead silent. No announcements of discos, just one second you hear traffic, the next,  nothing. 
Can anyone shed some light on this?