Understanding ping, ping-exit and ping-restart directives

[tor]

Currently I have my openvpn clients using a config with just the "ping 10" directive. I put this in as it appeared in the HOW-TO that I was following when setting up the VPN. As it has so far worked, I have not done anything else about it.

But recently I have problems with one client forgetting routes after about 10 seconds from connect. So I am wondering if I need to put something like ping-reset in my confs.

Trouble is, I have read the openvpn man page on their home page, but I couldnt really make sense of it. Could someone briefly explain directives?

Also do they need to be set in the client config or should they be pushed from the server?