need a thread to keep a socket connection alive?

[nephish at xit.net]

hey there,

i have a script that waits for message packets from a data server over
a socket.
it goes a little like this:

while 1:
        x+=1
        databack = sockobj.recv(158)
        if databack:

                print 'caught a message %s bytes ' % len(databack)
                if len(databack) > 120:
                        message = databack[3:-3] #strip stx and enx
                        print '\n\n%s' % message
        else:
               break
print 'end data ack'


it works fine for a while, but the server requires that i send a
heartbeat ping every 600 seconds or it will terminate the connection.

so i also need something like
while 1:
     sockobj.send(ping)
     ping_acknowlage = sockobj.recv(48)
     time.sleep(550)



should i do this with threads? i dont want to interrupt the listening
cycle to send a ping.

appreciate any tips on how would be the best way to pull this off.