DALnetizen - Who Is Peer?

WHO IS PEER?

One of the most famous people on IRC is the dreaded PEER. He'll reset your connection when you least expect it, and not have the slightest care. But who or what is the PEER who is always resetting our connections?

In the simplest terms, the PEER is any machine or program along the connection path from your hands to a remote host. It includes your modem drivers, your modem, your ISP's modems, your ISP's machines, your ISP's network, any machines between your ISP and the remote host, the modem or NIC on the remote host, the modem or NIC drivers, and the remote host machine itself. If any one of these fails or *hiccups*, then you will get the famous *connection reset by peer*.

Most times, the connection can be re-established almost instantaneously.

Often it is simply an error of some kind in any one of the devices/applications/machines between you and the remote host. There is a much more detailed explanation which covers many of these types of errors, but is beyond the scope of this article.

Other types of errors which contribute to this are actual remote host crashes, lines being severed, or routes being dropped. Imagine a backhoe operator in Western France, digging a ditch for a sewer pipeline. He accidentally cuts a fiber line that connects a University to the Internet. You were connecting to an IRC server there. That backhoe operator is your PEER!

PEER can take all shapes and sizes, but in the end, it's often something you can do nothing about, and it's never anything to be concerned about as a user.